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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-3879</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Seasonal variability in methane emissions from the Yangtze River Delta revealed by a high-resolution atmospheric inversion</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lu</surname>
<given-names>Mengrong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Huilin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1573-6673</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Xun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chi</surname>
<given-names>Xuguang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wei</surname>
<given-names>Chong</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0632-4324</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Fang</surname>
<given-names>Shuangxi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Fenjuan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3417-6170</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ioannidis</surname>
<given-names>Eleftherios</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff8">
<sup>8</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Reum</surname>
<given-names>Friedemann</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2488-6582</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff9">
<sup>9</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Xinlu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2622-7268</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff10">
<sup>10</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff11">
<sup>11</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff12">
<sup>12</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pradhan</surname>
<given-names>Prajal</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0491-5489</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff13">
<sup>13</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Peters</surname>
<given-names>Wouter</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8166-2070</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff14">
<sup>14</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hubacek</surname>
<given-names>Klaus</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Houweling</surname>
<given-names>Sander</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6189-1009</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff15">
<sup>15</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff16">
<sup>16</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES), Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, 9747 AG, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Joint International Research Laboratory of Atmospheric and Earth System Sciences, School of  Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Center for Isotope Research (CIO), Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG), University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Center for Advanced Energy Systems and Equipment, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201210, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Zhejiang Carbon Neutral Innovation Institute &amp; Zhejiang International Cooperation Base for Science and Technology on Carbon Emission Reduction and Monitoring, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters (CIC-FEMD), Nanjing University of Information Science &amp; Technology, Nanjing 210044, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Satellite Observation Center, Earth System Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff8">
<label>8</label>
<addr-line>Research &amp; Development Satellite Observations, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff9">
<label>9</label>
<addr-line>Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff10">
<label>10</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Coastal Environment and Resources of Zhejiang Province, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou 310030, Zhejiang, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff11">
<label>11</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Advanced Technology, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Hangzhou 310024, Zhejiang, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff12">
<label>12</label>
<addr-line>College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff13">
<label>13</label>
<addr-line>Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of Leibniz Association, Potsdam 14473, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff14">
<label>14</label>
<addr-line>Meteorology and Air Quality group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff15">
<label>15</label>
<addr-line>Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff16">
<label>16</label>
<addr-line>SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>27</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>64</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Mengrong Lu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3879/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3879/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3879/egusphere-2026-3879.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3879/egusphere-2026-3879.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Accurate methane (CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;) emission estimates are essential for attributing regional CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; sources and quantifying their spatial and temporal variability, particularly in high-emission regions of China under stringent mitigation policies. Here, we apply CTDAS-WRF, a regional inversion framework that couples the CarbonTracker Data Assimilation Shell (CTDAS) with WRF-Chem, to quantify CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; emissions over East Asia. Through Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs), we find that the system can recover ~61 % of the imposed prior-to-truth adjustment in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), 68 % in South Korea, and 93 % in northern Japan, indicating good performance in observation-rich regions. Using a composite prior for anthropogenic emissions based on EDGAR_2024 and CAMS v6.2, the 2022 inversion yields total posterior emissions of 7.530.09 Tg yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; in the YRD, which is 11.0 % lower than the prior (8.46 Tg yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;). Prior anthropogenic emissions are overestimated by 12.7 % (0.9 Tg yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;), while prior natural emissions are also higher by 0.03 Tg yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;. Daily posterior emissions exhibit a much stronger seasonal cycle and peak in summer, with natural sources and rice cultivation dominating the summertime underestimate in the prior. Independent evaluation at in situ station further supports the posterior improvement, with the daily mean absolute error reduced by 3.4 ppb (11.0 %) relative to the prior simulation. This work highlights the importance of accounting for seasonal variability in YRD emissions and provides a basis for future inversions that integrate in situ and satellite observations to better constrain the CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; budget of East Asia.</p>
</abstract>
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</article-meta>
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