Fugitive methane emissions, in particular relating to coal seam gas (CSG),has become an emerging issue in Australia over the last few years. There has been significant controversy in US regarding the magnitude of fugitive emissions during production from unconventional gas wells, with large differences in emissions reported between studies using different measurement approaches. . Preliminary research into a small number of Australia's unconventional fields suggest the average fugitive emissions per well are lower than that found in the US. The primary challenge is that the techniques for quantifying methane leakages are still at an early stage of development. Current methods for the small to medium scale use chamber based approaches or vehicles installed with fixed sampling lines and high precisions gas analysers. These technologies are promising, but generally have not been ground truthed in field conditions against known emission rates to estimate effectiveness. They also have limited application in environments where vehicle access is not possible. The Ginniderra facility is being upgraded to support a methane controlled release experiment in 2015. This will enable testing of and verifying methods and technologies for measuring and quantifying methane emissions. To address the absence of suitable techniques for emmission measurement at medium scales, several BOREAL lasers will be deployed which work at scales of 20-1000 m. It is also envisaged airborne techniques utilising laser and hyperspectral will be deployed, along with tomography work utilising multiple concurrent concentration measurements.

Results from the first pass application of the tomography technique using low accuracy sensors is presented and limitations of the sensors and technique discussed. BUll. Seismol. Soc. AM.

40 years atmospheric reanalysis for Australia region. http://www.ecmwf.int/products/data/archive/descriptions/e4/index.html

A metadata report for the atmospheric monitoring station installed in Arcturus, south of Emerald in central Queensland. The station was installed for baseline atmospheric monitoring to contribute to emission modelling spanning 2010-2014. The station included compositional gas analysers, supporting meteorological sensors and an eddy covariance flux tower. The metadata covered in the report include: the major variables measured by each instrument, the data duration and frequency, data accuracy, calibration and corrections, the location the data is stored, and the primary contact for the data.

This wind field was produced within v2.0 of TCRM, using data from the Bureau of Meteorology to constrain the wind field. Wind multipliers were calculated using a landcover dataset derived from Landsat and Digital Earth Australia. This wind field may be refined in the future as new data becomes available. This record includes - the track data from the Bureau of Meteorology used to model Tropical Cyclone Debbie - the landcover dataset produced for the Airlie Beach region - the preliminary local wind field

Weather radar data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology for initial investigation into thunderstorm tracking and analysis applications

The CO2CRC has been leading the international development and application of atmospheric techniques for CO2 leak detection and quantification for CCS. CSIRO's atmospheric monitoring program at the CO2CRC Otway Project demonstrated world's leading practice for atmospheric monitoring at geological storage sites. The GA-CO2CRC Ginninderra controlled release facility has enabled development and testing of a new atmospheric tomography approach for accurately quantifying CO2 emissions using atmospheric techniques. A scaled-up version of the technique using an array of more cost effective (but less accurate) sensors was applied at a larger scale at the Otway Stage 2B controlled release. Additional techniques have been developed including data filtering to optimize the detection of emitted gases against the ecosystem background and Bayesian inverse modeling to locate and quantify a source. GA and CSIRO operate a joint baseline atmospheric station in the Bowen Basin and have been independently investigating the sensitivity of CO2 leak detection through coupling of measurements taken in a sub-tropical environment with simulated leakage events. An outcome from this body of work is the importance of good quality, calibrated measurements, a long baseline record and the development and application of techniques using atmospheric models for quantifying gaseous emissions from the ground to the atmosphere. These same measurement requirements and quantification techniques have direct application to fugitive methane emissions from open cut coal mines, coal seam gas, tight gas, and conventional gas emissions. Application is easier for methane: the background signal is lower, sensors are available at affordable cost, and the emissions are measureable now. The Bowen Basin site, for example, is detecting fugitive methane emitted from open cut coal mining activities tens of kilometres away. An example of the sensitivity of atmospheric techniques for the detection of fugitive emissions from a simulated methane source will be presented.

The ultimate purpose of carbon capture and storage is to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere. However there are some scenarios in which leakage to atmosphere may occur. Because of the large and variable level of naturallyoccurring CO2 , and rapid dispersion in the atmosphere, leakage to atmosphere can be difficult to detect from concentration measurements. By using prior information from risk assessments about plausible location of leaks, it is possible to design simple yet effective systems for identifying the location of a leak within a pre-defined area of surveillance. We have designed an inexpensive system of autonomous sensors that can locate leaks of CO2 , and have tested it during a controlled release at the CO2CRC Otway site. The system proved effective and it, and its associated workflow, could be adapted and implemented in a variety of storage settings.

Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle during surface CO2 release experiments at the Ginninderra greenhouse gas controlled release facility H. Berko (CO2CRC, Geoscience Australia), F. Poppa (The Australian National University), U. Zimmer (The Australian National University) and A. Feitz (CO2CRC, Geoscience Australia) Lagrangian stochastic (LS) forward modelling of CO2 plumes from above-surface release experiments conducted at the GA-CO2CRC Ginninderra controlled release facility demonstrated that small surface leaks are likely to disperse rapidly and unlikely to be detected at heights greater 4 m; this was verified using a rotorcraft to map out the plume. The CO2 sensing rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle (RUAV) developed at the Australian National University, Canberra, is equipped with a CO2 sensor, a GPS, lidar and a communication module. It was developed to detect and locate CO2 gas leaks; and estimate CO2 concentration at the emission source. The choice of a rotor-craft UAV allows slower flight speeds compared to speeds of a fixed-wing UAV; and the electric powered motor enables flight times of 12 min. In experiments conducted at the Ginninderra controlled release facility, gaseous CO2 (100 kg per day) was released from a small diffuse source located in the middle of the paddock, and the RUAV was flown repeatedly over the CO2 source at a few meters height. Meteorological parameters measured continuously at the site at the time of the flight were input in the LS model. Mapped out horizontal and vertical CO2 concentrations established the need to be close to the ground in order to detect CO2 leakage using aerial techniques. Using the rotorcraft as a mobile sensor could be an expedient mechanism to detect plumes over large areas, and would be important for early detection of CO2 leaks arising from CCS activities.

In July 2010, Geoscience Australia and CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research jointly commissioned a new atmospheric composition monitoring station, named Arcturus, in sub-tropical Queensland, Australia. The facility is designed as a proto-type remotely operated `baseline monitoring station' that could be deployed in areas that are likely targets for commercial scale geological storage of carbon dioxide. A key question, given the ecosystem and anthropogenic sources of CO2 in the region, and the absence of a 'clean-wind' sector baseline, is how large would a CO2 leak have to be from a geological storage site before it can be detected above the background CO2 signal? To address this, CO2 leak simulation modelling was performed for 1-year period using the coupled prognostic meteorological and air pollution model TAPM at various locations, emission rates and distances (1-10 km) from the station.