Global methane emissions have surged, undermining efforts to curb climate change. Human activities continue to drive emissions from fossil fuels, agriculture, and wetlands, pushing warming beyond safe limits.
Methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change, have continued to rise without slowing down. Despite a global pledge by over 150 nations to reduce emissions by 30% this decade, new research reveals that global methane emissions have surged at an unprecedented rate over the past five years.
The trend “cannot continue if we are to maintain a habitable climate,” the researchers write in a Sept. 10 perspective article in Environmental Research Letters published alongside data in Earth System Science Data. Both papers are the work of the Global Carbon Project, an initiative chaired by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson that tracks greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Atmospheric concentrations of methane are now more than 2.6 times higher than in pre-industrial times – the highest they’ve been in at least 800,000 years. Methane emission rates continue to rise along the most extreme trajectory used in emission scenarios by the world’s leading climate scientists.
The current path leads to global warming above 3 degrees Celsius or 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. “Right now, the goals of the Global Methane Pledge seem as distant as a desert oasis,” said Jackson, who is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and lead author of the Environmental Research Letters paper. “We all hope they aren’t a mirage.”
More methane from fossil fuels, agriculture, and waste
Methane is a short-lived but highly potent greenhouse gas that comes from natural sources like wetlands and human or “anthropogenic” sources such as agriculture, fossil fuels, and landfills. During the first 20 years after release, methane heats the atmosphere nearly 90 times faster than carbon dioxide, making it a key target for limiting global warming in the near term.
Despite growing policy focus on methane, however, total annual methane emissions have increased by 61 million tons or 20% over the past two decades, according to the new estimates. Increases are being driven primarily by the growth of emissions from coal mining, oil and gas production and use, cattle and sheep ranching, and decomposing food and organic waste in landfills.
“Only the European Union and possibly Australia appear to have decreased methane emissions from human activities over the past two decades,” said Marielle Saunois of the Université Paris-Saclay in France and lead author of the Earth System Science Data paper. “The largest regional increases have come from China and southeast Asia.”
In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data are available, nearly 400 million tons or 65% of global methane emissions came directly from human activities, with agriculture and waste contributing about two tons of methane for every ton from the fossil fuel industry. According to the researchers, human-caused emissions continued to increase through at least 2023.
Assessing pandemic impacts
Our atmosphere accumulated nearly 42 million tons of methane in 2020 – twice the amount added on average each year during the 2010s, and more than six times the increase seen during the first decade of the 2000s.
Pandemic lockdowns in 2020 reduced transport-related emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which typically worsen local air quality but prevent some methane from accumulating in the atmosphere. The temporary decline in NOx pollution accounts for about half of the increase in atmospheric methane concentrations that year – illustrating the complex entanglements of air quality and climate change.
“We’re still trying to understand the full effects of COVID lockdowns on the global methane budget,” said Jackson. “COVID changed nearly everything – from fossil fuel use to emissions of other gases that alter the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere.”
Quantifying humans’ influence on methane from wetlands and waterways
The Global Carbon Project scientists have made an important change in their latest accounting of global methane sources and “sinks,” which include forests and soils that remove and store methane from the atmosphere.
In previous assessments, they categorized all methane from wetlands, lakes, ponds, and rivers as natural. But the new methane budget makes a first attempt to estimate the growing amount of emissions from these types of sources that result from human influences and activities.
For instance, reservoirs built by people lead to an estimated 30 million tons of methane emitted per year, because newly submerged organic matter releases methane as it decomposes. “Emissions from reservoirs behind dams are as much a direct human source as methane emissions from a cow or an oil and gas field,” said Jackson, who published a new book about methane and climate solutions titled Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere (Scribner) in July.
The scientists estimate that about a third of wetland and freshwater methane emissions in recent years were influenced by human-caused factors including reservoirs and emissions increased by fertilizer runoff, wastewater, land use, and rising temperatures.
After a summer when severe weather and heat waves have given a glimpse of the extremes predicted in our changing climate, the authors write, “The world has reached the threshold of 1.5C increases in global average surface temperature, and is only beginning to experience the full consequences.”
Reference: “Human activities now fuel two-thirds of global methane emissions” by R B Jackson, M Saunois, A Martinez, J G Canadell, X Yu, M Li, B Poulter, P A Raymond, P Regnier, P Ciais, S J Davis and P K Patra, 10 September 2024, Environmental Research Letters.
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad6463
This research was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO), the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme’s Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub, and Future Earth.
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14 Comments
A straight crock of crap. Methane is a natural gas that has been emitted from our planet since the beginning of time. One volcano eruption will emit more methane gas than all man made emissions combined. Of course we need to curb pollution, but to say cows and dams are destroying our atmosphere is ridiculous.
If only those silly scientists listened to you instead of wasting their time on a paper entitled “Human activities now fuel two-thirds of global methane emissions” (referenced in the article). Volcanos produce about 1/2 as much methane as oil and gas production.
The sky is falling CO2 not panning out so suddenly methane. Want to cut the methane remove every politician
Climate change is real and not cyclical, burning forests, droughts and the hottest 2 summers in recorded history and the Jetstream has slowed, and the Atlantic ocean currents aren’t cooling down.animals plants and insects are going extinct.human activity is destroying the world and it’s inhabitants.
“Climate change is real and not cyclical, …”
Then how do you explain the several ‘hot house’ and ‘ice house’ episodes that geologists have identified? How do you explain the multiple glaciations and their associated interglacials during the Pleistocene? Do you deny the science?
“… the hottest 2 summers in recorded history …”
Maybe. It appears that the 1930s may have been warmer, at least in North America. See Figure 1 at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/06/the-gestalt-of-heat-waves/ . If warming is occurring, which appears to be the case, then there is high probability that the most recent years will be among the warmest — based on the definition of warming! It is simple statistics.
“… animals plants and insects are going extinct …”
That is not new. Extinction is the engine of evolution. Without things becoming extinct, there would be more competition for available resources and mutations might be out-competed by organisms that have had a long time to become adapted to the prevailing conditions. Clearly, without dinosaurs becoming extinct, the small, timid mammals would not have been able to evolve into what we know today.
I nominate you for the ‘Chicken Little’ award of the month.
Okay, calm down now.
“Atmospheric concentrations of methane are now more than 2.6 times higher than in pre-industrial times, …”
The first thing one should remember is that zero, or any VERY small number, times any big number is still essentially zero! This article throws out a lot of what would normally be big numbers, IF they were dollars. However, Earth is very big, so we need to look at those numbers in context.
Why is it that nowhere does the article mention that methane is so rare that it is commonly measured in Parts Per Billion? Indeed, when converted to a common unit used for carbon dioxide — Parts Per Million — the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is less than 2 Parts Per Million (PPM) and has been increasing at a rate of about 0.01 PPM annually. Compare that to carbon dioxide, which has a concentration of about 425 PPM and is increasing at a rate of about 2-3 PPM annually. Does their claim that methane emissions are “a major contributor to climate change” sound convincing?
Methane has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) that is larger than carbon dioxide. However, when the difference in molecular weight is taken into account and they are compared on a molecule-by-molecule basis (PPM), and integrated over a 100-year span as recommended by the participants in the Kyoto Protocol, methane is only about 12X the potential of carbon dioxide. That is, 12X 0.01 PPM is about 0.1 PPM compared to carbon dioxide, which has an annual increase of 2-3 PPM. Similarly, the GWP of the current concentration of methane is only less than 10% of carbon dioxide. There is no mention of water vapor, which most candid scientists would acknowledge has more impact than CO2.
“Despite growing policy focus on methane, however, total annual methane emissions have increased by 61 million tons or 20% over the past two decades, …”
Let’s take a look at the numbers. The above statement suggests that methane is growing about 30 million tons over the nominal lifetime of methane in the atmosphere, or about 3 million tons per year, or an average of 1% per year. Why use the bigger numbers except to scare uncritical readers? The world population is currently about 8.2 billion people; it is expected to grow an additional 2 billion over the next 60 years, after which time it is predicted to decline. That amounts to a growth of about 24% over that period of time. That amounts to about 0.4% per year, about half the claimed growth rate of methane; they are essentially the same magnitude, suggesting that methane is growing in lockstep with the human population. The obvious solution to reducing anthropogenic methane growth is untenable.
You might ask yourself why the authors freely throw out a lot of big numbers, but don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes what is left out is more important than what is included. It is not unlike a man sharing with his wife every thing he did that day — except that he got home a little late because he stopped to share some time with his girlfriend.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
Well, they had to come up with SOMETHING. I mean, nobody (except possibly little Greta) still believes that C02 emissions are going to destory the planet. Quite the opposite – they’re greening it! So I guess methane was an obvious pivot, particularly in view of the globalists plan to phase out healthy farm products and force us all to eat veggies, insects and lab-factory meat containing fetus tissue courtesy of philanthro-capitalists like Bill Gates and his cronies. Crafty beggars, aren’t they!
“Clearly, without dinosaurs becoming extinct, the small, timid mammals would not have been able to evolve into what we know today.”
An untestable assumption emanating from the 1890s assumptions about dinosaurs. Given another 55 million years of evolution dinosaurs might have evolved to become small timid humans, just like us, but with better manners socially.
“Given another 55 million years of evolution dinosaurs might have evolved to become small timid humans, …”
An untestable assumption emanating from nothing but whimsy. While some few animal lines like sharks and brachiopods (lingula) have been around for a few hundred million years, most species either die out completely or evolve into something similar but different from the beginning of the line. Physiological evolutionary convergence of different species like ichthyosaurs and dolphins may produce things that look similar, but usually aren’t closely related. Humans from dinosaurs are the stuff of science fantasy. Mass extinctions appear to have a periodicity of about 26-27 million years.
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-discover-that-global-mass-extinctions-of-land-dwelling-animals-follow-a-27-million-year-cycle/
Did everyone miss the key to this report? Methane is at it’s highest in 800,000 years. This is obviously a Ice Core Sample record. Which would indicate this happens naturally. The Planet heats up, atoms get excited, expansion occurs and, the Earth squeezes out some gases. From under the Ocean Floors, because it’s closer to the Mantel and, those pockets of methane that the Core is cooking up!
“Methane is at it’s highest in 800,000 years.”
Big numbers tend to impress people, especially if they are not critical readers. The questions are, “Is the high concentration of any importance? Or is it just thrown out to impress the gullible?”
Distractive questions lead to nothingness or, non-sense.
Great comments everyone. Now. How do we reverse the increasing temperature of Earth?