Methane Budget Recently, international team of scientists | UPSC Environment Ecology Prelims National Parks
Methane Budget
Recently, international team of scientists has published an update on the global methane budget as part of the Global Carbon Project.
Methane is emitted from a range of anthropogenic sources like landfills,agriculture, and fossil fuels, as well as natural systems like wetlands.
It is the second most important greenhouse gas that humans are contributing to.
Since pre-industrial times, increases in atmospheric methane have contributed to a quarter of the climate-warming effect from greenhouse gases.
But unlike carbon dioxide, methane has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere.
Report Highlights - If big changes are brought in our emissions, methane can be removed relatively quickly.
They estimated annual global methane emissions at nearly 570 million tons for the 2008 to 2017 decade.
This is 5% higher than emissions recorded for the early 2000s and the equivalent of 189 million more cars on the world‘s roads.
Anthropogenic sources like agriculture, waste, and fossil
fuels contributed to 60% of these emissions, while wetlands made up for the largest natural source of methane.
Global wetland methane emissions remained largely unchanged between the last decade and the early 2000s,these landscapes have continued to introduce some of the greatest uncertainties in estimating the global
methane budget.
Wetlands are estimated to make up 20% to 30% of the global methane budget, but emissions vary by latitude.
The fluxes are larger in the tropics than in the high latitudes and temperate zones.
