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Greenhouse gas monitoring projects, reports, and data

Overview

The CDPHE Air Pollution Control Division works with contractors, non-governmental organizations, and academic researchers on pollution monitoring projects using aircraft, satellites, and other innovative technologies. These projects focus on measuring and reducing greenhouse gases to support near term actions set by the state’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap, yet additional observations of air pollutants are often collected to study air quality efforts. The Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin Memorial Fund and Senate Bill 22-193: The Air Quality Improvement Investments Act supported the monitoring projects.

Methane plume mapping efforts

The CDPHE Air Pollution Control Division has engaged with the non-governmental organization Carbon Mapper to perform several campaigns to identify and measure large plumes of methane emissions from sources in Colorado. The Aerial Methane Plume Mapping Summary Report outlines how the division used Carbon Mapper’s aircraft data to inform actions aimed at reducing emissions. Plume data collected in Colorado is available on Carbon Mapper’s Data Portal.

Contracted monitoring projects

Fall 2021 aerial mass balance survey project

The University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Maryland led this collaborative air monitoring project in 2021. The project referenced air monitoring data from DISCOVER-AQ, FRAPPE, and SONGNEX aircraft campaigns conducted from 2011-2015. The goal was to measure oil and gas related emissions of methane, ethane, and specific volatile organic compounds in Colorado’s Denver-Julesburg basin using the Aircraft Mass-Balance approach. The learnings and further analyses from this study have been taken into the subsequent mission by the same team detailed below in the 2023 project. Finalized results from this project were prepared in the form of a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, a copy of that manuscript is available in the supplemental information to the final report for the 2023 survey project.

Fall 2023 aerial mass balance survey project

This fall 2023 aerial mass balance survey project was a follow-up study to the 2021 air monitoring project, where a similar team from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Maryland conducted additional research flights in the fall of 2023. Additional ground-based measurements from two mobile laboratories were deployed alongside the aircraft. Research flights were conducted in the Piceance Basin in addition to those in the Denver-Julesburg Region, with results and analyses available in the final report.

Airborne Methane Mass Balance Emissions in Colorado (AMMBEC) 2024

This project was a collaborative effort between the air division, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the University of Colorado Boulder. This project was the first of several missions within the AiRMAPS initiative to be conducted throughout the United States from 2024-2026. The project had a dual mission of measuring methane emissions from the oil and gas sector in the Denver-Julesburg basin, as well as measuring air pollutants from the front range for their effect on the formation of ground-level ozone pollution.

The department supported the addition of an Airborne Multi-AXis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (AMAX-DOAS) instrument onboard the aircraft payload in addition to the AMMBEC flight campaign. The instrument collects column measurements of nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde, similar to the recently launched TEMPO satellite. Alongside the in-situ measurements collected from the aircraft, the column measurements show promise for validating TEMPO data in the front range.

Separate reports are available for the overall AMMBEC mission as well as the column measurements data from the AMAX-DOAS instrument.

TROPOMI satellite research study

The University of Colorado Boulder conducted this research project using data from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI)  onboard the Sentinel-5P satellite. The project evaluated whether this data has the ability to measure methane emissions related to oil and gas production in Colorado. The final report for this project summarizes the capacity and limitations of using data from TROPOMI to quantify methane emissions in Colorado.

Site-Air-Basin Emissions Reconciliation (SABER) project

The SABER research project was primarily supported by the United States Department of Energy under Funding Opportunity Announcement 2616: Innovative Methane Measurement, Monitoring and Mitigation Technologies. This project is a collaborative effort between Colorado State University, Penn State University, University of Wyoming, and Bridger Photonics. The overall goal of the project is to use a mechanistic model to align oil and gas “Bottom-Up” emissions inventory reporting to “Top-Down” methodologies for emissions measurements utilizing driving surveys, aerial flyovers, and basin-scale modeling from tall tower and satellite measurements. The air division provided funding to support the tall tower network deployment and operation to measure methane and ethane emissions from the Denver-Julesburg region. The tower monitoring and methane data analysis portions of the SABER project will continue into 2026 in partnership with the division and via funding from another federal grant. 

Colorado Ongoing Basin Emissions (COBE) project

This research project was conceived to provide the most granular level of methane emissions measurement data specific to upstream oil and gas facilities for the purpose of developing the default factors for the implementation of the Upstream Intensity Verification Rule. The project was led by the Energy and Emissions Modeling and Data Lab, which comprises Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines, and the University of Texas at Austin. Aerial surveys were performed of oil and gas facilities throughout the state with the goal of developing a measurement-informed inventory for methane emissions from the upstream sector. The final report discusses the data collected from this project as well as two different model analyses to infer the discrepancy in upstream segment methane emissions between what the air division collects through the ONGAEIR program and the aerial survey measurements. Further research and peer-reviewed publication of this work is ongoing. Anonymized data collected from the survey vendors for this project is also provided. In November 2025, Colorado State University submitted an updated final report for this project. It used the most recent data from the 2024 ONGAEIR reports which improved the estimated modeled emissions.

Characterizing Oil & gas & agRicultural Emissions in the Northern COlorado Basin (CORNCOB) study

This research project was a collaboration between researchers at Colorado State University and The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This project collected measurements of ammonia, methane, and ethane from a mobile monitoring platform in March-April 2025. The overall effort of the project aimed to better understand  the contribution of methane emissions from oil and gas development and agricultural operations in Northern Weld County.  Additionally, this project collected measurement data from the Bishop well control incident that occurred in Galeton, CO in April 2025 that the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) responded to. The final report summarizes preliminary analyses performed on the data, plans for further analysis, collaboration with concurrent efforts, and publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Contact us

Questions? Email cdphe.commentsapcd@state.co.us with "GHG Monitoring Projects" in the subject line.