Integrated Methane Inversion
The Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI) is an open-access cloud-computing tool enabling users to quantify methane emissions for any region worldwide at up to 12-km resolution by analytical inversion of satellite observations.
How do I Access the IMI?
The IMI is an open-source software project and freely accessible via the AWS Marketplace. You can use it on the AWS cloud or by downloading it to your own computing cluster.To get started with the IMI, read the documentation on the IMI readthedocs site. Instructions are provided to configure the IMI, run it on AWS, and visualize output.
- To access the IMI source code, visit the GitHub repository.
- For a high-level scientific description, see the IMI development papers by Varon et al. (2022) and Estrada et al. (2025).
Outputs and capabilities
- Total methane emissions in region of interest
- Up to 12-km resolution weekly
- Sectoral and point source identification
- Cutting-edge analytical inversion method, extensively documented in literature
- Use by simple editing of configuration file, or select from many options for advanced users
- Interactive output visualization tool
- Detailed error characterization of results
We encourage new users to email us at integrated-methane-inversion@g.harvard.edu
with a description of your project. This helps us identify priorities for new features and updates.
To request technical support users should open a Github issue
Collaboration
The IMI is developed and maintained by an international team of researchers at MIT, Harvard University, SRON Space Research Organisation Netherlands, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Development of the IMI is supported by NASA Carbon Monitoring System, Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, ExxonMobil, UNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory, and Global Methane Hub.
