Atmospheric remote sensing constraints on direct sea-air methane flux from the 22/4b North Sea massive blowout bubble plume

•A new remote sensing approach for estimating direct atmospheric CH4 emissions from offshore blowout accidents.•A new upper limit estimate of the direct atmospheric CH4 emissions from the 22/4b blowout site to below 10 ktCH4/y.•Airborne short wave infrared (SWIR) atmospheric CH4 remote sensing in solar glint direction over the ocean.

A new airborne remote sensing approach to estimate an upper limit of the direct sea-air methane emission flux was applied over the 22/4b blowout site located at N57.92°, E1.63° in the North Sea. Passive remote sensing data using sunglint/sunglitter geometry were collected during instrumental tests with the Methane Airborne MAPper - MAMAP - instrument installed aboard the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Polar-5 aircraft on 3. June 2011. MAMAP is a passive short wave infrared (SWIR) remote sensing spectrometer for airborne measurements and retrieval of the atmospheric column-averaged dry air mole fractions of methane (XCH4) and carbon dioxide (XCO2). In addition to MAMAP a fast CH4 in-situ analyzer (Los-Gatos Research Inc. RMT-200), two 5-hole turbulence probes and the Polar-5 basic sensor suite comprising different temperature, pressure, humidity and camera sensors were installed aboard the aircraft. The collected MAMAP remote sensing data acquired in the vicinity of the 22/4b blowout site showed no detectable increase in the derived XCH4 (with respect to the atmospheric background). Based on the absence of a detectable XCH4 column increase, an approximate top-down upper-limit for the direct atmospheric 22/4b blowout CH4 emissions from the main bubble plume of less than 10 ktCH4/yr has been derived. The constraint has been determined by comparing XCH4 information derived by the remote sensing measurements with results obtained from a Gaussian plume forward model simulation taking into account the actual flight track, the instrument sensitivity and measurement geometry, as well as the prevailing atmospheric conditions.