Landfills are significant sources of methane, but their emissions vary significantly over time and do not correlate well with predictive models. Over two and a half years, we measured emissions from a landfill in northern New Jersey using a novel tower-based method. We observed a consistent seasonal cycle with the highest emissions in the early winter and lowest emissions in the summer. Total emissions in 2023 were up to 5 times larger than reported to the EPA.
We observed the highest emissions when temperatures were near freezing and atmospheric pressure was rapidly dropping. Unfortunately, many of the gold standard measurement techniques in our field, including satellites and aircraft measurements, have low-emissions sampling biases. Ground-based, continuous measurements fill in a crucial gap for monitoring methane emissions from landfills.
Link to paper
Link to news report
This is the first paper from Andrew Hallward Driemeier's PhD Thesis work.
