Keynote Speaker - Ilse Aben

Prof. dr. Ilse Aben is a senior scientist in the Earth group at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research. Her group at SRON focuses primarily on the interpretation of satellite remote sensing data of greenhouse gases (methane and CO2) and related species. Aben is the Dutch Co-Principal Investigator and co-initiator of the TROPOMI instrument on the Sentinel-5 Precursor mission. She leads the SRON TROPOMI team responsible for safeguarding the scientific performance of the TROPOMI SWIR channel measuring CO and methane. Her team runs a number of projects focusing on detection and emission quantification of a.o. methane super emitters. This work is done in support of emission mitigation projects from the United Nations, the Worldbank, the Global Methane Hub and CAMS. In 2025 she received the Dutch NWO Stevin award for scientific research with societal impact. Aben is endowed professor at the Earth Sciences department of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, a member of the CCAC Science Advisory Panel, and member of various Mission Advisory Groups

“Methane satellite observations in support of climate action”

Over the past few years we have seen a true revolution in satellite observations of methane  with direct relevance to support climate action. Using the Dutch TROPOMI satellite instrument on ESA’s Sentinel-5 Precursor, we have shown for the first time that we can detect methane hot spots/super-emitters globally coming from large emitting sources found in oil & gas production fields, coal mine regions, and urban areas. However, with TROPOMI’s ‘city’-scale resolution we can in most cases not determine the exact source of the large emission hot spot we see. For this we developed the so-called tip-and-cue approach where we use high spatial resolution satellites that can zoom-in at facility level and can determine what exactly is causing these huge emissions seen with TROPOMI. This approach is adopted by the United Nations International Methane Emission Observatory (IMEO) as the basis for their Methane Alert Response System (MARS) where they notify companies and governments of any major detections, and ask them to fix the problem. Similarly this satellite information is used by other organisations like the World Bank and NGOs in support of their efforts to reduce methane emissions worldwide.

In this presentation I will illustrate and elaborate on the above developments of relevance to reducing methane emissions worldwide.