[SIGNAL]

When an Attribution
Lands, Know If It's Right.

Satellite portals, UN notifications, and press reports now publish operator-linked methane attributions on a rolling cadence. Advect Labs re-derives the attribution from independent public data and delivers a scorable confidence on the claim.

[GAP]

Carbon Mapper, the UN's Methane Alert and Response System, and the EPA Super Emitter Response Program all publish operator-linked methane attributions on a rolling cadence. Journalists run their own analyses against the same feeds.

OGCI's Satellite Methane Detection Response Playbook, the de facto response reference, states that no best practices exist for evaluating the accuracy of a plume's origin. When an attribution lands on your assets, there is no accepted basis for judging whether it is correct. A field survey that finds nothing cannot close the question if the source was intermittent, and most detected sources are.

[METHODOLOGY]
01

Independent Re-Derivation

Re-derive the attribution from inputs the original accuser did not use: NOAA wind reanalysis, public well registries, and a forward Gaussian dispersion model run against the published plume centroid.

02

Scorable Confidence

Assign a calibrated posterior over the wind-cone candidate set: a distribution, not a point estimate, that can be checked against ground truth and recalibrated when a gap appears.

03

Evaluation Record

A per-claim structured record covering source identification, uncertainty analysis, attribution rationale, response-workflow alignment, and complete data provenance. Filed alongside the operator's response to a notification.

Advect Labs does not own the detection layer. It re-derives and evaluates attributions that Carbon Mapper, UN MARS, EPA SERP, and other third parties publish. Independence comes from the inputs: wind, asset registries, and transport physics the original accuser did not use.

[BASIS]
Methodological Inputs
NOAA HRRR 3 km hourly wind reanalysis, interpolated to plume centroid in UTM. The independent wind input the original accuser did not use.
NM OCD / TX RRC Public wellbore registries filtered to acquisition epoch; clustered into inferred pads. Independent asset layer.
Briggs 1973 / P-G σ Gaussian dispersion formulae (Seinfeld & Pandis 2016); steady-state forward model run from each candidate location.
Cusworth et al. 2021 AVIRIS-NG airborne campaign, Delaware Basin; publishes both observed plumes and independently derived source coordinates — the rare public dataset where results can be scored against ground truth.
OGCI Playbook 2025 Satellite Methane Detection Response Playbook; defines the operator response workflow the evaluation record is structured to serve.
Case Study 01 — Delaware Basin
Plumes Scored
9 / 11
Nearest-Pad Recall
9 / 9
Median Truth Distance
104 M
Mean Stated Confidence
0.88
Mean Calibration Gap
−0.01 150 M BAND

Methodology tested end-to-end on eleven Delaware Basin plumes at airborne (AVIRIS-NG) resolution against Cusworth et al. 2021 ground truth. That dataset publishes both the observed plume and an independently established true source, so each re-derivation can be scored. Nine plumes scored; two excluded under a documented low-wind cutoff. Confidence is mean-unbiased at the 150 m band on this sample (stated 0.88 vs. empirical 0.89, a −0.01 gap). Contact us to review the full methodology documentation.

[CASE STUDIES]
CS-01

Independent Evaluation of Methane Source Attribution

Basin Delaware Basin, NM / TX
Date 27 Oct 2019
Instrument AVIRIS-NG (airborne)
Plumes 11 observed · 9 scored
Ground truth Cusworth et al. 2021, ES&T Letters

Two-layer re-derivation: nearest-pad geometry for location, forward Gaussian dispersion for confidence. Nearest-pad recall 9/9; median truth distance 104 m. Confidence mean-unbiased at the 150 m band on this sample (stated 0.88 vs. empirical 0.89, −0.01 gap). Calibration degrades into measurable, disclosed overconfidence at satellite-scale input noise. The method measures this rather than asserting calibration it does not have.

CS-02

Satellite-Resolution Attribution Evaluation

Instrument Tanager-1 / EMIT
Status In preparation

Extension of the CS-01 pipeline to satellite-resolution detections, with a resolution-aware prior and abstention policy. Tests whether the confidence stays honest (or honestly abstains) on real Carbon Mapper and EMIT attributions where ground truth can be independently established.

In Preparation
[CONTACT]

Request a Briefing

For regulatory affairs, ESG, sustainability, and measurement leads at operators whose assets have been, or could be, named in a public methane attribution. No pitch decks.