IG3IS Webinar Series 2026: Lessons learned on the use of satellite observations for estimating methane emissions
Speaker:
Dr. Rona Thompson, Senior Scientist at NILU, Norway
About the speaker:
Dr. Rona Thompson has been a senior scientist at NILU in Norway since 2011. Her main research interests are in quantifying the sources and sinks of atmospheric pollutants, especially greenhouse gases, and improving understanding of the processes that drive them. For this, she employs atmospheric transport models and statistical methods. Dr Thompson has long experience working with and developing numerical models for atmospheric research. She is actively involved in Norwegian and European research projects and is currently the coordinator of the Horizon Europe project, EYE-CLIMA (https://eyeclima.eu) and the co-leader of the Global Carbon Project N2O Budget.
Overview of the topic:
Satellite observations are increasingly used for emissions estimation and for comparison with emission inventories. While many satellites provide global (or near-global) coverage and provide observations where ground-based measurements are lacking, they present significant challenges when incorporated into atmospheric inversion frameworks for estimating emissions. This talk will focus on incorporating observations of CH4, specifically from the TROPOMI instrument, into inversions to estimate emissions in Europe and globally, discuss how to get the most out of these observations, and point out possible sources of error and limitations of these measurements.
