New York City greenhouse gas emissions estimated with inverse modeling of aircraft measurements

Cities are greenhouse gas emission hot spots, making them targets for emission reduction policies. Effective emission reduction policies must be supported by accurate and transparent emissions accounting. Top-down approaches to emissions estimation, based on atmospheric greenhouse gas measurements, are an important and complementary tool to assess, improve, and update the emission inventories on which policy decisions are based and assessed. In this study, we present results from 9 research flights measuring CO₂ and CH₄ around New York City during the nongrowing seasons of 2018–2020. We used an ensemble of dispersion model runs in a Bayesian inverse modeling framework to derive campaign-average posterior emission estimates for the New York–Newark, NJ, urban area of (125 + 39) kmol CO₂ s^–1 and (0.62 + 0.19) kmol CH₄ s^–1 (reported as mean + 1s variability across the nine flights). We also derived emission estimates of (45 + 18) kmol CO₂ s^–1 and (0.20 + 0.07) kmol CH₄ s^–1 for the 5 boroughs of New York City. These emission rates, among the first top-down estimates for New York City, are consistent with inventory estimates for CO₂ but are 2.4 times larger than the gridded EPA CH₄ inventory, consistent with previous work suggesting CH₄ emissions from cities throughout the northeast United States are currently underestimated.