NASA Earth Observatory image modified by SkyTruth
Flaring
Where does the data come from?
The data for this map was originally made available by NOAA’s Earth Observation Group. As of 15 October 2019, the data is now freely-available from Earth Observation Group (EOG), Payne Inst. for Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines.
How does flaring volume get estimated?
The Earth Observation Group have authored the following papers for those interested in the VIIRS instrument and how the flare volume is calculated.
Elvidge, C. D., Zhizhin, M., Hsu, F-C., & Baugh, K. (2013). VIIRS Nightfire: Satellite Pyrometry at Night. Remote Sensing 5(9), 4423-4449.
Elvidge, C. D., Zhizhin, M., Baugh, K. E, Hsu, F-C., & Ghosh, T. (2015). Methods for Global Survey of Natural Gas flaring from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Data. Energies, 9(1), 1-15.
Elvidge, C. D., Bazilian, M. D., Zhizhin, M., Ghosh, T., Baugh, K., & Hsu, F-C (2018). The Potential Role of Natural Gas Flaring in Meeting Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Targets. Energy Strategy Reviews, 20, 156-162.
How does the map data get processed?
Here are a few things that we do at SkyTruth to process and present the data on the Flaring Map.
For each daily Nightfire file we process:
- We eliminate temperatures under 1,500° kelvin.
- For each day, we merge VIIRS Nightfire detections that are within 1500m of each other. This accounts for the 750m at-nadir resolution of the VIIRS instrument, which is the source of Nightfire detections. When two nearby detections are merged, we average their longitude, latitude, Radiant Output and Temperature, and we sum their Radiative Heat and Footprint.
To create the data used in the flaring map:
- For each new location in the flaring records from step 1, we total the number of flaring records (also from step 1 for prior dates) that are within 925m of the new location in the previous 30 days.
- If the count is 3 or more, we create a flaring location for the map. The location is the centroid of the matching flaring from the previous 30 days. The downloaded file contains data (Radiant Output, Temperature, etc.) that is carried over from the step 1 records.
Notes:
The data are limited in the extreme northern and southern latitudes due to extreme solar illumination and atmospheric conditions.
There was no data available from NOAA between Sept. 29 – Oct. 16, 2013.
In December 2017, the VIIRS instrument began collecting Nightfire data with an additional spectral band. This change resulted in many more high-temperature determinations, which you can see reflected in the timeline as an abrupt increase in apparent flaring activity.
What are the applications/uses for this map?
Applications for this map include:
- Demonstrating the tremendous amount of natural gas flaring around the world.
- Learning if flaring is a chronic problem in your community or places you care about.
- Tracking active drilling in gas-producing regions where flaring occurs during the drilling and completion of wells.
- Verifying when petrochemical facilities were flaring in order to aid identifying the source of noxious air emissions polluting fence-line communities.
- Holding companies accountable for wasting public and private resources through routine flaring.
- Informing public health research on the impacts of flaring on respiratory health and other disciplines.
- Let us know how you could use flaring detections to skytruth an issue in your community.
Verified on the ground by a team we sent out North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and further cross-referenced against aerial and satellite imagery of other flaring hotspots such as Russia, Africa, and the Middle East, this map is updated daily to show the frequency of infrared detections hot enough to be gas flares.
I’m not seeing a flaring detection I expected to see. Why not?
If you don’t see a flaring detection you expected to see, it may be because of the ways that we process and present the flaring data. Some flares don’t burn hot enough to be included in our dataset, they may not have been burning when the satellite passed overhead, the flare may not be frequent enough to make it past the 3 detection threshold, heavy clouds have obscured the flare from the sensor, etc.
Is this data available for download?
Our license does not permit us to share the underlying data used in these maps. To access VIIRS Nightfire and other flaring data, please see the original data provider, Earth Observation Group.
How are upstream, midstream and downstream segments defined in the oil & gas industry?
The Library of Congress has an Oil & Gas research guide that defines upstream, midstream and downstream segments with examples.
