Recent methane surges reveal heightened emissions from tropical inundated areas

Record breaking atmospheric methane growth rates were observed in 2020 and 2021 (15.2±0.5 and 17.8±0.5 parts per billion per year), the highest since the early 1980s. Here we use an ensemble of atmospheric inversions informed by surface or satellite methane observations to infer emission changes dur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2024-12, Vol.15 (1), p.10894
Main Authors: Lin, Xin, Peng, Shushi, Ciais, Philippe, Hauglustaine, Didier, Lan, Xin, Liu, Gang, Ramonet, Michel, Xi, Yi, Yin, Yi, Zhang, Zhen, Bösch, Hartmut, Bousquet, Philippe, Chevallier, Frédéric, Dong, Bogang, Gerlein-Safdi, Cynthia, Halder, Santanu, Parker, Robert J., Poulter, Benjamin, Pu, Tianjiao, Remaud, Marine, Runge, Alexandra, Saunois, Marielle, Thompson, Rona L., Yoshida, Yukio, Zheng, Bo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/35
704/106/47/4113
704/2151/209
Data transmission
Emission
Emissions
Groundwater
Groundwater storage
Growth rate
Humanities and Social Sciences
Inversions
Methane
multidisciplinary
Satellite observation
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Surges
Wetlands
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Summary:Record breaking atmospheric methane growth rates were observed in 2020 and 2021 (15.2±0.5 and 17.8±0.5 parts per billion per year), the highest since the early 1980s. Here we use an ensemble of atmospheric inversions informed by surface or satellite methane observations to infer emission changes during these two years relative to 2019. Results show global methane emissions increased by 20.3±9.9 and 24.8±3.1 teragrams per year in 2020 and 2021, dominated by heightened emissions from tropical and boreal inundated areas, aligning with rising groundwater storage and regional warming. Current process-based wetland models fail to capture the tropical emission surges revealed by atmospheric inversions, likely due to inaccurate representation of wetland extents and associated methane emissions. Our findings underscore the critical role of tropical inundated areas in the recent methane emission surges and highlight the need to integrate multiple data streams and modeling tools for better constraining tropical wetland emissions. The record-breaking atmospheric methane growth rates in 2020 and 2021 revealed heightened emissions from inundated areas in tropical Africa and Asia. However, current processed-based wetland models fail to capture emission surges in these regions.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-55266-y