Projects: AiRMAPS 2025: Baltimore & Marcellus Shale

Baltimore Air Quality and Marcellus Methane Survey (BAQMMS)

When: June - August 2025
Where: Baltimore and Marcellus Shale
Platforms: NOAA Twin Otter, NOAA ARL Air Resources Car (ARC)
Baltimore Air Quality and Marcellus Methane Survey (BAQMMS) white paper

Washington, D.C. - Baltimore is a well-established urban greenhouse gas emission testbed that remains out of compliance with current standards for ozone pollution. The Marcellus shale is one of the largest U.S. oil and gas basins. OAR will survey both regions with a NOAA Twin Otter and ground based mobile platforms.

Coordinating Activities

Ground Sites

Department of Energy (DoE) Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) Urban Integrated Field Lab (IFL)
Department of Energy (DoE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Coast-Urban-Rural Atmospheric Gradient Experiment (CoURAGE)
NIST Northeast Corridor Urban Test Bed for Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Maryland Department of the Environment (DEQ)

NASA Airborne Platforms

NASA Instrument: AVIRIS (Airborne Visible / Infrared Imaging Spectrometer) coordinated with EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation)
NASA King Air B-200 and P-3B: SARP (Student Airborne Research Program) East and West flights, large aircraft payload
NASA Gulfstream 3: High Altitude Lidar Observatory (HALO) and MethaneAIR coordinated with MethaneSAT

Satellites

Carbon Mapper coordinated with Tanager-1
GHGSat data provided by NOAA NESDIS
TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of POllution)
GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), with reference to M. Watine-Guiu, D.J. Varon, I. Irakulis-Loitxate, and D.J. Jacob, Geostationary satellite observations of extreme and transient methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023.
TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument) Methane