Black carbon emissions from flaring in Russia in the period 2012–2017

Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Dr. Mikhail Zhizhin’s (and others) research shows how gas flaring in the oil and gas industry has been identified as an important source of anthropogenic black carbon (BC) affecting the climate, particularly in the Arctic. Our study provides spatially-explicit estimates of BC emissions from flaring in Russia utilising state-of-the-art methodology for determining the emission factors. We utilised satellite time series of the flared gas volume from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) for the period 2012 to 2017, supplemented with information on the gas and oil field type.  April 2, 2021.