Articles | Volume 18, issue 24
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-17895-2018
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-17895-2018
Research article
 | 
17 Dec 2018
Research article |  | 17 Dec 2018

Detecting changes in Arctic methane emissions: limitations of the inter-polar difference of atmospheric mole fractions

Oscar B. Dimdore-Miles, Paul I. Palmer, and Lori P. Bruhwiler

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Cited articles

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Bruhwiler, L.: NOAA, TM5 model runs in support of Dimdore-Miles et al., 2018, available at: ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/user/lori/oscar/ipd, last access: 14 December 2018. 
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Short summary
The Arctic is experiencing warming trends higher than the global mean. Arctic ecosystems are a large store of carbon. As the soil organic carbon thaws and decomposes, some fraction of this store will eventually be released to the atmosphere as methane. We show that a previously used measurement-based metric to identify changes in Arctic methane emissions does not reliably quantify these changes because it neglects the effect of atmospheric transport. A better metric will combine data and models.
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