Anna Hodshire - Models Models Everywhere: Can we get two models to agree on the same methane emissions dataset?

Abstract

Many studies have been done in North American oil and gas (O&G) basins to quantify methane emissions from O&G operations. These studies have used several different approaches that often lead to different answers even within the same basin. However, they most often fundamentally use different datasets on top of using different methods. The Colorado Ongoing Basin Emissions (COBE) project allowed for a rare opportunity within O&G studies: two models developed on the same underlying dataset. The underlying dataset was a set of over 30,000 individual facility scans via aerial surveys, with around 2,000 emissions detections. The first model developed a measurement-informed inventory using the Mechanistic Air Emission Simulator (MAES). The second model developed a measurement inventory through a statistical model (SM) by using only measurements. Initial model results indicate that the SM is ~3 times higher than MAES, with most emissions in the SM coming from <5 kg/hr emitters. This indicates the importance of better understanding and modeling small emissions for both models. Our presentation will detail methodological differences and developments from ongoing harmonization efforts.

Bio

Anna Hodshire is an Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering Department at Colorado State University (CSU) and a lead scientist with the Methane Emissions Technologies Evaluation Center (METEC). She leads the modeling group at METEC, currently focused on developing verifiable measurement-informed inventories and working on top down/bottom up reconciliation. As a part of this work, she leads field campaigns and intensive modeling efforts for top down/bottom down surveys and basin-wide surveys of oil and gas emissions of methane. She also helps coordinate graduate student onboarding and recruitment efforts for METEC. Her research interests are broadly on pollution emission and dispersion, air quality, climate change, and the intersection of planetary health among all these topics. Prior to joining METEC, Hodshire worked at small companies focused on measuring properties of atmospheric aerosols for health and climate applications. Hodshire holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University.