Methane From US Landfills 40% Greater Than Reported, Study Finds
More than half of the waste sites observed during aerial surveys showed clear signs they were a point source of emissions, a new report published in Science shows.
A bulldozer moves trash at a landfill refuse site.
Photographer: Bloomberg Creative Photos/BloombergMethane spewing from major US landfills is on average 40% greater than reported, according to a new study published in Science in which scientists used aerial surveys to identify point source emissions from hundreds of waste sites.
The analysis suggests that while the emissions are significantly under reported they also present a major opportunity for mitigation because many of the releases persist for months or even years. Airborne observations offer important advantages over current survey approaches that typically involve a worker walking across portions of the landfill with a detector logging locations of high surface concentrations of methane.