Novel lightweight based coal mine methane emission framework exhibits transferability between observations in Poland and Shanxi

Abstract Methane (CH 4 ) is a potent greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential, and accurate estimation of its emissions is essential for effective climate-change mitigation. This study evaluates the cross-regional applicability of a lightweight mass-balance emission framework constrained by local in-situ observations for quantifying coal-mine methane releases. Regional emissions models were developed by integrating in-situ observations from Shanxi (China) and the Upper Silesian coal basin (USCB, Poland) with TROPO spheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) XCH 4 retrievals with a simplified mass-conserving atmospheric chemical transport framework. These two locally trained models are simultaneously applied to Shanxi and USCB. Results show the Shanxi model outperforms the Poland model in capturing strong emission signals due to its wider long-range transport sensitivity. In Shanxi (2021–2022), the Shanxi model estimates emissions ranging from 0.1 to 241 ug m −2 s −1 , with annual emissions of 4.7 Tg yr −1 (2021) and 5.9 Tg yr −1 (2022), lower than the EDGAR inventory. In the USCB, its emission range is 0.04–110 ug m −2 s −1 , consistent with the CoMet inventory. Both models align better with actual emissions and capture temporal variations more effectively than EDGAR, while the Shanxi model demonstrates stronger cross-regional applicability, offering a valuable reference for the future development of globally applicable, regionally adaptive methane inversion models.