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- Catalog Owner
- Environmental Defense Fund - MethaneSAT
- Dataset Availability
- 2025-07-09T00:00:00Z–2025-10-10T00:00:00Z
- Dataset Producer
- Environmental Defense Fund - MethaneSAT
- Contact
- EDF-MethaneSAT
- Tags
Description
This dataset provides geospatial data for the total column dry air mole fraction of methane in the atmosphere, "XCH4", as observed by the MethaneAIR imaging spectrometer. XCH4 is defined as the total column amount (number of molecules) of methane ("CH4") divided by the total amount of air (number of molecules, water vapor amount removed) along the line of sight from the airborne spectrometer to the earth's surface and back up to the sun. Additional data layers are provided for reference: observed albedo at 1622 nm, surface pressure, and terrain height.
The aircraft was flown at 11.5 - 13 km altitude (37,000 - 43,000 feet), acquiring 10 frames per second with a swath of 4.5 - 4.8 km with a 25 degree field of view and 896 pixels across track, giving a native pixel size at nadir of approximately 25m along track and 5 m across track. The spectroscopic data are aggregated by 5 across track, giving a mean pixel size of 25m x 25m. Concentrations (XCH4) are retrieved from these high resolution (0.1 nm sampling, 0.3nm resolution), spatially distributed spectra (Chan Miller et al. (2024)), then gridded on a 0.0001 x 0.0001 degree grid (approximately 10m x 8m over the US). The precision of the gridded data is approximately 25 parts per billion (1s, about 1.3%), and a spatial correlation length (1/e) of about 70m. There are some variations from flight-to-flight according to operating conditions, look angle and surface albedo.
The flight pattern was typically a series of oval swaths in a Zamboni pattern to cover a region, typically about 70 km x 100 km, over a 2 - 3 hour interval. The data presented here are averaged where flight tracks overlap, typically at the edges of each swath and in the urns at the top and bottom of the Zamboni pattern.
This dataset was generated using MethaneAIR measurements taken on flights between 09 July 2025 and 10 October 2025. MethaneAIR is managed by MethaneSAT LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Environmental Defense Fund. Methane emission fluxes were produced using a geostatistical inverse modeling framework on each of these Zamboni swaths.
For additional information about the MethaneAIR instrument, instrument calibration and emission detections, please refer to recent publications by Loughner et al. (2021), Staebell et al. (2021), Conway et al. (2023), Chulakadabba et al. (2023), Abbadi et al. (2023), Omara et al. (2023), and Miller et al. (2023).
Contact the data provider for more information about the project at this link: https://www.methanesat.org/contact/.
Bands
Bands
Pixel size: 10.2 meters (all bands)
| Name | Units | Min | Max | Pixel Size | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
XCH4 |
ppb | 1894* | 2114.65* | 10.2 meters | Retrieved column-averaged dry-air CH4 mole fraction. |
albedo |
0 | 1 | 10.2 meters | Ratio of solar radiance at the ground to observed radiance at the sensor. |
|
surface_pressure |
hPa | 725.95* | 1011.33* | 10.2 meters | Air pressure at the surface. |
terrain_height |
km | 0.026* | 2.915* | 10.2 meters | Elevation with respect to WGS84 reference ellipsoid. |
Image Properties
Image Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| flight_id | STRING | Research flight number. |
| target_id | INT | Flight Target ID. |
| time_coverage_end | STRING | Data collection end time in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ format STRING (ISO 8601). |
| time_coverage_start | STRING | Data collection start time in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ format STRING (ISO 8601). |
| processing_id | STRING | (internal) Processing run identifier that represents the calculations that led to the features. It is not an attribute describing the flight, but the processing pipeline. |
Terms of Use
Terms of Use
Use of this data is subject to MethaneSAT's Content License Terms of Use.
YOUR LICENSE TO ACCESS THE DATA
- We hereby grant you a limited, nonexclusive, nonassignable, nontransferable, revocable license to use, reproduce, publish, make derivative works, display and perform publicly any Data first made available through the Platform pursuant to the terms set forth herein, subject to your agreement to, compliance with and satisfaction of these Terms of Use (the “License”)
You agree to and acknowledge the following restrictions relating to the License:
- (1) To access the Data, you must complete this Request Form, which will ask for your contact information, intended use cases, target customers, and other details that will assist MethaneSAT’s understanding of how the Data is being used by you, and, upon submission of such form, MethaneSAT may (in its sole discretion) grant you access to the Data;
(2) With respect to certain aspects of the Data as described herein, you may use methane concentrations, in parts per billion or any other unit of concentration (“Level 3 Data” or “L3 Data”) and methane emission fluxes, in kilograms per hour (“Level 4 Data” or “L4 Data”) for:
- (i) internal business evaluation and testing,
- (ii) commercial applications, such as developing and selling derivative products and services that incorporate or are informed by the L3 Data or L4 Data,
- (iii) distribution of the Data made available herein to wholly controlled affiliates of which you will be responsible and liable on their behalf for adherence to these Terms of Use, or
- (iv) methane mitigation activities, including both commercial and non-commercial initiatives;
(3) You are strictly prohibited from using L3 Data to calculate or derive L4 Data or any similar outputs, except and exclusively for internal use purposes and not to distribute to any third party;
(4) You may not distribute, publish, sublicense, sell, or otherwise provide L3 Data or L4 Data in its raw form to any third parties, provided, however, that you may develop, commercialize, and sell derivative products and services based on your review of the L3 Data and L4 Data, provided, further (and for the avoidance of doubt), that the underlying L3 Data and L4 Data (in its raw form) shall not be shared nor made directly accessible to end users/third parties; and
(5) That you are not permitted to distribute the Data on any other platform that would make the Data available to third parties, other than to you and your wholly controlled affiliates.
As a condition of accessing the Data, you further agree and acknowledge that:
(1) MethaneSAT seeks information about how the Data will be used and, as such, you shall use best efforts, upon request by MethaneSAT, that you will
- (i) provide feedback on the quality of the Data and any proposed improvements thereto, and
- (ii) share anonymized insights on target customers and market applications;
(2) MethaneSAT may use aggregated or anonymized insights to refine its Data offerings.
ATTRIBUTION
If you share or use the Data in any manner with any third parties, you must:
- Explicitly state to these third parties that they are agreeing to be bound by the Terms of Use;
- Display a citation that states: “Data from MethaneSAT” and “Download the most current dataset at Google Earth Engine and/or Google Cloud”; and
- Explicitly state to these third parties that, if such third party creates a further project containing the Data, any such users of that project must also agree to be bound by these Terms of Use.
Citations
Chulakadabba, A., Sargent, M., Lauvaux, T., Benmergui, J. S., Franklin, J. E., Chan Miller, C., Wilzewski, J. S., Roche, S., Conway, E., Souri, A. H., Sun, K., Luo, B., Hawthrone, J., Samra, J., Daube, B. C., Liu, X., Chance, K., Li, Y., Gautam, R., Omara, M., Rutherford, J. S., Sherwin, E. D., Brandt, A., and Wofsy, S. C. 2023. Methane point source quantification using MethaneAIR: a new airborne imaging spectrometer, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 5771-5785. doi:10.5194/amt-16-5771-2023,
Explore with Earth Engine
Code Editor (JavaScript)
// Request access to this data by filling out the form at: https://forms.gle/jqw4Mvr63dsV1fUF8 var dataset = ee.ImageCollection("projects/edf-methanesat-ee/assets/mair/L3concentration") .filterDate('2025-07-11', '2025-07-12'); var fluxVisParams = { bands: ['XCH4'], min: 1870, max: 2030, palette: ['#070088','#a3069b','#cc4e64','#ffa826','#edfb59'], }; Map.setCenter(-76.8, 39, 9); Map.addLayer(dataset, fluxVisParams, 'Retrieved column-averaged dry-air CH4 mole fraction');