Satellite vs Inventory Methane: The 70% Gap

Findings

For the 2022 reporting year, the EDGAR v8.0 snapshot loaded in emissions_records records the top methane emitters totalling 5,969 MtCO2e (AR6 GWP100 weighting). Independent satellite measurements from Climate TRACE and the IEA Global Methane Tracker suggest the true methane emissions for fossil-fuel operations — oil-and-gas system leaks, coal-mine ventilation, flaring — run roughly 70% higher than countries report in their UNFCCC inventories or as bottom-up models capture. Applied to the EDGAR top-12 baseline, that implies the true methane total for those 12 countries is approximately 10,147 MtCO2e rather than the EDGAR-reported 5,969.

Source: EU EDGAR v8.0 (2024); 1.70 multiplier from IEA Global Methane Tracker (2024) consensus estimate for fossil-fuel methane under-reporting.

Fugitive emissions: where the gap concentrates

Pulling the fugitive-sector CH4 from emissions_records (oil-and-gas leaks, coal-mine ventilation) isolates the slice where the satellite-vs-inventory gap is concentrated. Major hydrocarbon producers — Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Iran, Iraq, Algeria — show fugitive methane in EDGAR that satellite measurements consistently flag as substantial under-reports. The top 10 by EDGAR fugitive-CH4 are pulled below.

Source: EU EDGAR v8.0 fugitive-emissions sector (2024). Query: SUM(value_mt_co2e) BY iso3 WHERE sector='FUGITIVE' AND gas='CH4' AND year=2022.

Why the gap matters

Methane's twenty-year global-warming potential is roughly 80× CO2's. Its hundred-year GWP under AR6 is 27.9× for fossil methane and 27.0× for biogenic — the figures applied above. The under-reporting gap is therefore a non-trivial slice of total radiative forcing being added to the atmosphere without appearing in any country's nationally-determined contribution under the Paris Agreement. As satellite measurement quality improves and Climate TRACE's facility-level estimates become more granular, expect the next several years of UNFCCC inventories to be revised upward for fossil methane. That upward revision is genuine new information about a previously-invisible portion of the atmosphere — it is not new emissions, only newly-measured ones.

The policy implication is asymmetric. Closing the methane gap is among the most cost-effective near-term decarbonization moves available — methane leaks have direct economic value once captured, and the abatement technology is mature. The IEA estimates that roughly half of fossil-methane emissions could be eliminated at no net cost or even with cost savings. The international Global Methane Pledge — over 150 country signatories committed to a 30% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 — relies on accurate baseline accounting to verify progress. As satellite-derived baselines replace self-reported figures, the question of which country is on track shifts.

Methodology

Methane figures on this page are loaded from emissions_records WHERE gas_code='CH4' AND year=2022 AND source_code='EDGAR'. The 70% satellite-adjustment multiplier is applied for illustrative purposes only and is drawn from the IEA Global Methane Tracker 2024 consensus across the fossil-fuel subsector — not from a Climate TRACE row currently in emissions_records. The full Climate TRACE 2023 release will load via a future ETL stage (12-load-climate-trace.mjs) into emissions_records with source_code='CLIMATE_TRACE'; when it does, this page will reflect the actual cross-source query rather than the IEA-derived adjustment factor. For methodological transparency see PlainEmissions methodology and the upstream Climate TRACE documentation at climatetrace.org.

Limitations

The 70% under-report multiplier is sector-specific (fossil-fuel methane) and country-mix-dependent. It does not apply to agricultural methane (enteric fermentation, manure management, rice cultivation), where bottom-up activity-data plus emission factors are reasonably aligned with satellite-derived signals. Brazilian and Indonesian biogenic methane from land use and waste sit outside the fossil-methane gap entirely. Applying a flat 1.70× multiplier across all top-12 emitters therefore overstates the gap for countries whose methane is predominantly agricultural (India, China at the margin) and understates for hydrocarbon-export economies (Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran). The country-specific gap will sharpen significantly when Climate TRACE 2023 loads into emissions_records alongside EDGAR — at which point the actual per-country, per-sector divergence is queryable directly rather than via a single global multiplier. Users with research interests in cross-source methane should consult both EDGAR and Climate TRACE primary publications.

Related

• Top 15 Emitting Countries (2022)
• Multi-Source Emissions Reconciliation
• Climate TRACE explained
• Methodology & Data Sources