Emissions of methane in Europe inferred by total column measurements
Abstract. Using five long-running ground-based atmospheric observatories in Europe, we demonstrate the utility of long-term, stationary, ground-based measurements of atmospheric total columns for verifying annual methane emission inventories. Our results indicate that the methane emissions for the region in Europe between Orleans, Bremen, Bialystok, and Garmisch are overestimated by the state-of-the-art inventories Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) v4.2 FT2010 and TNO-MACC_III, possibly due to the disaggregation of emissions onto a grid. Uncertainties in the carbon monoxide inventories used to compute the methane emissions may contribute to the discrepancy between our inferred emissions and those from the inventories.