Methane on the Rise—Again
Atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas methane are rising, but the reasons remain incompletely understood.
Abstract
Roughly one-fifth of the increase in radiative forcing by human-linked greenhouse gases since 1750 is due to methane. The past three decades have seen prolonged periods of increasing atmospheric methane, but the growth rate slowed in the 1990s (1), and from 1999 to 2006, the methane burden (that is, the total amount of methane in the air) was nearly constant. Yet strong growth resumed in 2007. The reasons for these observed changes remain poorly understood because of limited knowledge of what controls the global methane budget (2).
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References and Notes
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Dlugokencky E. J., Nisbet E. G., Fisher R., Lowry D., Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. A 369, 2058 (2011).
2
Kirschke S., et al., Nat. Geosci. 6, 813 (2013).
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Shakhova N., et al., Nat. Geosci. 7, 64 (2014).
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Fisher R. E., et al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L21803 (2011).
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Karion A., et al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 4393 (2013).
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Published In
Science
Volume 343 | Issue 6170
31 January 2014
31 January 2014
Copyright
Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Published in print: 31 January 2014
Acknowledgments
Supported in part by the UK Natural Environment Research Council MAMM and Tropical Methane projects, the European Union's Ingos project, and Royal Holloway.
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- Euan G. Nisbet et al.
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