Although methane isn’t as abundant in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it is more than a bit-part player in the overall trend of global warming. This is because of the potency of its greenhouse effect, with the gas around 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat over a 100-year spam.
The team tracked global methane emissions between 2000 and 2017, the last year from which complete data is available, and found that emissions are up nine percent from the early 2000s, equal to an extra 50 million tons per year. The researchers say this is like putting 350 million more cars on the road, or doubling the emissions of Germany or France.
Across the period studied, the team says that agriculture contributed roughly two-thirds of human-generated methane emissions, with an increase of nearly 11 percent in 2017 compared to the 2000-2006 average. Those emissions generated by the fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, made up most of the rest and were up nearly 15 percent across the same timeframe.
While methane emissions have actually decreased in Europe over the last two decades, sharp surges were seen in Africa and the Middle East, China and South Asia, and Oceania, with these three regions increasing their methane emissions by 10 to 15 million tons per year. The US, meanwhile, increased by 4.5 million tons per year, driven largely by increases in natural gas drilling operations.
“Natural gas use is rising quickly here in the US and globally,” Jackson says. “It’s offsetting coal in the electricity sector and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but increasing methane emissions in that sector.”
https://newatlas.com/environment/global-emissions-methane-record-high/