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Coupled Climate Model experiments and methane leakage measurement


Description

Summary

There is a huge gap between production from existing fields with convectional recover methods and global demand with the next 2 decades. However, fracking can provide more oil/gas production in the current founded oil/gas field. And we haven’t found any other alternative energy source which can complete take the place of fossil fuel. So we have no other choice but to accept the new technology. However, we need to face many criticisms from environmentalists. We need to know more about the new technology and their pros and cons.

Carbon dioxide and methane is greenhouse gas and trap the long wave radiation and make the earth warmer. However, the long term (millions of years) climatology is largely controlled by solar activity, earth orbit change etc. But greenhouse gas will indeed impact the climate variability in several decade or hundreds of years. The most sever consequence is more frequency extreme events (heat wave, drought, hurricane and floods). So if we focus on climate impact, extreme event is the one most worth considering. For example, more hurricanes might impact the oil production site on the ocean or along the coast. What’s more, Global Warming Potential (GWP) is valuable to compare the irradiative forcing of different gases but is not sufficient to tell the whole story of fuel-switching scenarios. Here we propose to do the climate model experiments to simulate the impact of methane as well as the measurement of methane leakage to get a better understanding.


Category of the action

Adaptation


What actions do you propose?

Although the fundamental approach to reduce the methane is technology innovation, this research can tell us how will the fracking impact the climate. In this way, we have a quantities guild line to organize the research in improving the recover and storage technology. What’s more, we can also know, the critical point of methane leakage is friendly to climate. This will be the criteria to judge a technology is good not not.

 

Alvarez concludes that if the leakage rate can be reduced to 1.6% of natural gas produced, natural gas would result in climate benefit immediately based on the comparison of GWP of different gases (Alvarez 2012). This is very interesting and exciting research. However, GWP applies to single molecule, different methane’s spatial and temporary distribution will affect the climate system differently. What’s more, there are many other factors like the natural variability, aerosol, chemical reaction, transportation etc. will interact with each other. Current climate models/Earth System Model (for example CESM-WACCM) can capture the main processes and their interactions in the earth/climate system. They are very good tools to study the methane’s impact on climate system.

 

Step 1:

Part 1: Do model simulation with the hypothesis that methane content is uniformity at global range. This research looks at the methane’s radiation impact on the climate system. Using fixed different amount of methane to simulate, the expect results will be the methane concentration and the climate impact (average temperature, frequency of extreme events, etc)

Part 2: Based on the Alvarez’s discuss (Alvarez 2012), the methane leakage in production is the biggest, more than 60.7% of the total estimated leakage. And the leakage during Transmission/Storage is 19.2%. Those two factors contribute the 79.9% of the total eatimated leakage. The measurement equipment should be built in the production and storage sites first. To further reduce the budget, do not need to measures all site of natural gas production sites but select some large or important sites to measure. Other production and storage sites can be estimated using the observation data from selected production/storage sites, the size of remaining production/storage sites, statistical methods.

 

Step 2:

Get a more detailed methane emission source to get a better simulation. Use the integrated models like Earth System Model with advanced chemical routine to simulate the life cycle of methane: source, sink, major chemical reaction, transportation pathway, etc. This approach aims at getting a more realistic and comprehensive understanding of the methane’s impact on climate.

In this step model experiments should base on the measurement of methane leakage. The proposed measurement strategy is selecting at least one production field and at least one storage site to fit up the experiment. Here we suggest a production/storage site has at least 4 measurement devices in case the wind might blow the methane to a specific direction. However, the distribution of those devices can be further discussed and optimized as the research moves forward as well as how many production/storage sites should be selected.

 


Who will take these actions?

 

An interdisciplinary research group: at least one scientist on climate and have the knowledge of running climate models. At least one member knows the details of hydraulic fracturing, At least one expert in statistical or math, Plus other staffs to maintain the measurement equipment and data collection. Economists are welcome but not a must in this plan.


Where will these actions be taken?

 

Computer Lab, production/storage sites

For the research, it can be taken on a supercomputer to run climate model and analyze the output. The observed results can be used to validate the model as well as model input.


What are other key benefits?

 

This research can have a better understanding of the fracking’s impact on climate, especially the extreme event. The observation data collected from the production/storage sites can validate and improve the climate models. The proposed research can also bring climatologist and petroleum engineer together. This research results can also be the input of IPCC report: science group and mitigation group


What are the proposal’s costs?

 

Roughly estimate:1-2 million

Step 1: (Part 1, around $100000-$200000; Part 2, depents on the measurement devices‘ price and the way to distribute them)

Step 2: $200000-$500000


Time line

 

For Step 1-Part 1, 6 month-1 year

Setup the interdisciplinary group and design the model experiment get the initial model output; select the production field, gas station, vehicles to equip with the methane monitor. The globally leakage will be estimated using advanced statistical method.

For Step 1-Part 2, 6 month-1 year or even longer, can be conducted at the same time as Step 1-Part 1

For Step 2, 1-2 year

The next step should summarize all the results and take advantages of all new technology occurs during the last several and make future plan.


Related proposals


References