Cynthia Randles & Erin Tullos: The International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) and the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP 2.0)

The International Methane Emissions Observatory’s Methane Alert and Response System (MARS)

To fill gaps in knowledge and refine global understanding of the location and magnitude of methane emissions across sectors, integrated data from a range of sources is needed. As countries and industry establish ambitious mitigation targets, accurate and measurement-based emission estimates are critical to accelerate emission reductions and assess progress by tracking changes in emissions over time.

The International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) was launched in 2021 at the G20 summit as an activity of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). UNEP IMEO is providing reliable, public, policy-relevant data to facilitate actions to reduce methane emissions. UNEP IMEO is collecting and integrating diverse methane emissions data streams, including satellite remote sensing data, science studies, inventories, and measurement-based industry reporting to establish a global, centralized public record of empirically verified methane emissions.

The Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), designed by the UNEP International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO), is the first global system connecting satellite methane detection to transparent notification processes that promote on-the-ground emissions mitigation efforts. MARS harnesses state-of-the-art satellite data to identify major emissions events, activate its partners to notify relevant stakeholders, and support and track progress towards mitigation. Currently MARS focuses on very large point sources from the energy sector.  Moving forward MARS will integrate data from the rapidly expanding system of methane-detecting satellites to include lower-emitting area sources and more frequent detection. This will allow the expansion of the system to the agriculture and waste sectors.  In this presentation, we will provide an overview of IMEO and details of the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) as an example of translating Earth Observations into actions that help to mitigate emissions of methane – a powerful greenhouse gas over eighty-times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

Bio

Cynthia Randles is currently the Program Manager for the Methane Alert Response System (MARS) for the UN Environment Program’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO).  MARS is the first global system that connects satellite methane detection to transparent notification processes that promote on-the-ground emissions mitigation efforts, initially for the Energy sector.  Prior to her work at UNEP, Cynthia was a climate scientist at the ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (EMRE), where her work focused, amongst other things, on furthering understanding of point-source methane detection with existing and future satellites, and Bayesian flux inversion for understanding basin-to-country scale methane emissions.  While at EMRE, she also served as a lead and contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.   Cynthia also worked as an Associate Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for 8 years where her work included global aerosol modeling, constituent data analysis, and constituent forecasting for aircraft field campaigns.  She has a Ph. D. from the Princeton University Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and an S. B. in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Erin Tullos is a Senior Advisor and the Measurement & Reconciliation expert for the OGMP 2.0 for UNEP. She leverages her 16 years of industry experience to champion methane measurement and mitigation strategies that recognize operating realities. She is also a Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin in the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources in the Cockrell School of Engineering, focusing on methane detection, mitigation, and measurement reconciliation. She holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Texas A&M University (Whoop!) a B.A. in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics from the same.