%0 Journal Article %A Seongeun Jeong %A Xinguang Cui %A Donald R Blake %A Benjamin R Miller %A Stephen A Montzka %A Arlyn E Andrews %A Abhinav Guha %A Philip T Martien %A Ray P Bambha %A Brian W LaFranchi %A Hope A Michelsen %A Craig B Clements %A Pierre Glaize %A Marc L Fischer %B Geophysical Research Letters %D 2017 %N 117117 %P 486 - 495 %R 10.1002/2016GL071794 %T Estimating methane emissions from biological and fossil-fuel sources in the San Francisco Bay Area %7 2 %8 01/2017 %! Geophys. Res. Lett. %X

We present the first sector-specific analysis of methane (CH4) emissions from the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) using CH4 and volatile organic compound (VOC) measurements from six sites during September – December 2015. We apply a hierarchical Bayesian inversion to separate the biological from fossil-fuel (natural gas and petroleum) sources using the measurements of CH4 and selected VOCs, a source-specific 1 km CH4 emission model, and an atmospheric transport model. We estimate that SFBA CH4 emissions are 166–289 Gg CH4/yr (at 95% confidence), 1.3–2.3 times higher than a recent inventory with much of the underestimation from landfill. Including the VOCs, 82  27% of total posterior median CH4 emissions are biological and 17  3% fossil fuel, where landfill and natural gas dominate the biological and fossil-fuel CH4 of prior emissions, respectively.