Mayor of West Yorkshire meets Emily Dowd

The Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, fulfilled an ambition by meeting PhD student Emily Dowd at the university. Mayor Brabin was on campus to attend the launch of the UK Earth Observation Network for Sustainability (UK-EONS) and was delighted to secure an unexpected photo with Emily.

In her speech the Mayor paid tribute to the 'work of a PhD student who had used satellite data to discover a major gas leak in Cheltenham' - unaware that Emily, the PhD student in question, was in the audience. On learning that Emily was in the room, the Mayor jumped at the chance to request a selfie.

Emily published her work on the detection of the Cheltenham gas leak using GHGSat in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. The discovery was widely reported in the media (e.g. top BBC website science news story on Sept 16 2023) and was obviously picked up by the Mayor and her team as a great example of using satellite data to help tackle climate change.

Dowd, E., A.J. Manning, B. Orth-Lashley, M. Girard, J. France, R.E. Fisher, D. Lowry, M. Lanoisellé, J.R. Pitt, K.M. Stanley, S. O'Doherty, D. Young, G. Thistlethwaite, M.P. Chipperfield, E. Gloor and C. Wilson, First validation of high-resolution satellite-derived methane emissions from an active gas leak in the UK, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1599-1615, doi:10.5194/amt-17-1599-2024, 2024.