Date: 19 September, 2023

Dataset Title: Aircraft Data (2022) for Flaring & Fossil Fuels: Uncovering Emissions & Losses (F3UEL)

Dataset Creators: Kort, Eric A.; Plant, Genevieve; Brandt, Adam R.; Chen, Yuanlei; Gorchov Negron, Alan M.; and Smith, Mackenzie L.

Contact:For questions or information, contact the PI Dr. E. A. Kort at eakort@umich.edu and Dr. G. Plant at geplant@umich.edu

Funding: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Description: As part of the Flaring & Fossil Fuels: Uncovering Emissions & Losses (F3UEL) project, in 2022 the aircraft measurement platform sampled offshore oil & gas facilities in the US Gulf of Mexico to quantify facility-level emissions using the approach detailed in Conley et al. (2017). Vertical profiles were conducted on each flight to capture the vertical structure and mixing depths of the atmosphere. The data file contains all merged flight data from each flight day. Reference: Conley, S., Faloona, I., Mehrotra, S., Suard, M., Lenschow, D. H., Sweeney, C., Herndon, S., Schwietzke, S., Pétron, G., Pifer, J., Kort, E. A., and Schnell, R.: Application of Gauss’s theorem to quantify localized surface emissions from airborne measurements of wind and trace gases, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 3345 – 3358, 2017. 

Methodology: Data collected by Mooney aircraft in 2022 offshore in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Measurements of methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and water vapor (H2O), are collected with the Picarro model 2301-f instrument with wavelength-scanned cavity ringdown spectrometry. Measurements were made at a frequency of 0.33 to 0.5 Hz with an uncertainty of 1.4 ppb CH4. Ozone (O3) was collected by the 2B 205 Dual Beam Ozone Monitor using two detection cells to simultaneously measure ozone scrubbed and non-scrubbed air. Samples were made at a frequency of 0.5 Hz with an average precision and accuracy of 1 ppb. Nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were measured by ECOphysics 88 NOe and Teledyne T5000U instruments, respectively. GPS antennae, mounted on the Mooney aircraft, recorded latitude, longitude, altitude, aircraft heading, zonal speed, and meridional speed. Horizontal winds are calculated following Conley et al (2014) . Temperature (C) and humidity (%) were collected with the Vaisala HMP60 probe. Reference: Conley, Stephen A., Ian C. Faloona, Donald H. Lenschow, Anna Karion, and Colm Sweeney. “A Low-Cost System for Measuring Horizontal Winds from Single-Engine Aircraft.” Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 31, no. 6 (2014): 1312–20.

Column descriptions:

Date: date of flight (yyyymmdd)
Time.EPOCH: seconds since 01/01/1970
Latitude: GPS latitude of measurement
Longitude: GPS longitude of measurement
Altitude.m.: Altitude in meters
WindU.m.s.: U Wind speed in meters/second
WindV.m.s.: V Wind speed in meters/second
Temperature.C.: observed temperature in Celsius
RH.per.: observed relative humidity (%)
CH4.ppm.: observed methane in parts per million
CO2.ppm.: observed carbon dioxide in parts per million
H2O.per: Observed water vapor in percent
CO.ppm.: observed carbon monoxide in parts per million
O3.ppb.: observed ozone in parts per billion
NO2.ppb.: observed NO2 in parts per billion
NO.ppb.: observed NO in parts per billion
Pressure.mb. observed pressure in mbar


Data Notes:
1) Missing Value indicator = -9999
2) There are uncharacterized offsets in the NO and NO2 measurements. Accordingly, the NO & NO2 data is best suited for relative/differential form of analysis.  Contact data creators for recommendations on addressing offset.
3) Issues with the RH probe (RH.per) results in very little data passing quality filters. 

Use and Access: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Citation for this dataset: Kort, E. A., Plant, G., Brandt, A. R., Chen, Y., Gorchov Negron, A. M., Smith, M. L. Aircraft Data (2022) for Flaring & Fossil Fuels: Uncovering Emissions & Losses (F3UEL) [Data set], University of Michigan - Deep Blue Data. https://doi.org/10.7302/dvqe-q821