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

Related authors

Using Geostationary-Derived Sub-Daily FRP Variability vs. Prescribed Diurnal Cycles: Impact of African Fires on Tropospheric Ozone
Haolin Wang, William Maslanka, Paul I. Palmer, Martin J. Wooster, Haofan Wang, Fei Yao, Liang Feng, Kai Wu, Xiao Lu, and Shaojia Fan
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2594,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2594, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP).
Short summary
WetCH4: a machine-learning-based upscaling of methane fluxes of northern wetlands during 2016–2022
Qing Ying, Benjamin Poulter, Jennifer D. Watts, Kyle A. Arndt, Anna-Maria Virkkala, Lori Bruhwiler, Youmi Oh, Brendan M. Rogers, Susan M. Natali, Hilary Sullivan, Amanda Armstrong, Eric J. Ward, Luke D. Schiferl, Clayton D. Elder, Olli Peltola, Annett Bartsch, Ankur R. Desai, Eugénie Euskirchen, Mathias Göckede, Bernhard Lehner, Mats B. Nilsson, Matthias Peichl, Oliver Sonnentag, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, Torsten Sachs, Aram Kalhori, Masahito Ueyama, and Zhen Zhang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 2507–2534, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2507-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2507-2025, 2025
Short summary
The role of the tropical carbon balance in determining the large atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2023
Liang Feng, Paul Palmer, Luke Smallman, Jingfeng Xiao, Paulo Cristofanelli, Ove Hermansen, John Lee, Casper Labuschagne, Simonetta Montaguti, Steffen Noe, Stephen Platt, Xinrong Ren, Martin Steinbacher, and Irene Xueref-Remy
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1793,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1793, 2025
Short summary
Strong relation between atmospheric CO2 growth rate and terrestrial water storage in tropical forests on interannual timescales
Samantha Petch, Liang Feng, Paul Palmer, Robert P. King, Tristan Quaife, and Keith Haines
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.173343481.12875858/v1,https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.173343481.12875858/v1, 2025
Short summary
Global greenhouse gas reconciliation 2022
Zhu Deng, Philippe Ciais, Liting Hu, Adrien Martinez, Marielle Saunois, Rona L. Thompson, Kushal Tibrewal, Wouter Peters, Brendan Byrne, Giacomo Grassi, Paul I. Palmer, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Zhu Liu, Junjie Liu, Xuekun Fang, Tengjiao Wang, Hanqin Tian, Katsumasa Tanaka, Ana Bastos, Stephen Sitch, Benjamin Poulter, Clément Albergel, Aki Tsuruta, Shamil Maksyutov, Rajesh Janardanan, Yosuke Niwa, Bo Zheng, Joël Thanwerdas, Dmitry Belikov, Arjo Segers, and Frédéric Chevallier
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 1121–1152, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1121-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1121-2025, 2025
Short summary

Related subject area

Subject: Gases | Research Activity: Atmospheric Modelling and Data Analysis | Altitude Range: Troposphere | Science Focus: Chemistry (chemical composition and reactions)
Influence of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds emission changes on tropospheric ozone variability, trends and radiative effect
Suvarna Fadnavis, Yasin Elshorbany, Jerald Ziemke, Brice Barret, Alexandru Rap, P. R. Satheesh Chandran, Richard J. Pope, Vijay Sagar, Domenico Taraborrelli, Eric Le Flochmoen, Juan Cuesta, Catherine Wespes, Folkert Boersma, Isolde Glissenaar, Isabelle De Smedt, Michel Van Roozendael, Hervé Petetin, and Isidora Anglou
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 8229–8254, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8229-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-8229-2025, 2025
Short summary
Tropospheric ozone trends and attributions over East and Southeast Asia in 1995–2019: an integrated assessment using statistical methods, machine learning models, and multiple chemical transport models
Xiao Lu, Yiming Liu, Jiayin Su, Xiang Weng, Tabish Ansari, Yuqiang Zhang, Guowen He, Yuqi Zhu, Haolin Wang, Ganquan Zeng, Jingyu Li, Cheng He, Shuai Li, Teerachai Amnuaylojaroen, Tim Butler, Qi Fan, Shaojia Fan, Grant L. Forster, Meng Gao, Jianlin Hu, Yugo Kanaya, Mohd Talib Latif, Keding Lu, Philippe Nédélec, Peer Nowack, Bastien Sauvage, Xiaobin Xu, Lin Zhang, Ke Li, Ja-Ho Koo, and Tatsuya Nagashima
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 7991–8028, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7991-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7991-2025, 2025
Short summary
Characterization of reactive oxidized nitrogen in the global upper troposphere using recent and historic commercial and research aircraft campaigns and GEOS-Chem
Nana Wei, Eloise A. Marais, Gongda Lu, Robert G. Ryan, and Bastien Sauvage
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 7925–7940, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7925-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7925-2025, 2025
Short summary
Soil deposition of atmospheric hydrogen constrained using planetary-scale observations
Alexander K. Tardito Chaudhri and David S. Stevenson
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 7369–7385, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7369-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7369-2025, 2025
Short summary
Comparative ozone production sensitivity to NOx and VOCs in Quito, Ecuador, and Santiago, Chile
María Cazorla, Melissa Trujillo, Rodrigo Seguel, and Laura Gallardo
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 7087–7109, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7087-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7087-2025, 2025
Short summary

Cited articles

AMAP: AMAP Assessment 2015: Methane as an Arctic climate forcer, Tech. rep., Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Oslo, Norway, 2015. a, b
Bergamaschi, P., Krol, M., Dentener, F., Vermeulen, A., Meinhardt, F., Graul, R., Ramonet, M., Peters, W., and Dlugokencky, E. J.: Inverse modelling of national and European CH4 emissions using the atmospheric zoom model TM5, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 5, 2431–2460, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-5-2431-2005, 2005. a
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. 
Bruhwiler, L., Dlugokencky, E., Masarie, K., Ishizawa, M., Andrews, A., Miller, J., Sweeney, C., Tans, P., and Worthy, D.: CarbonTracker-CH4: an assimilation system for estimating emissions of atmospheric methane, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 8269–8293, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8269-2014, 2014. a, b
Christensen, T. R., Johansson, T., Åkerman, J., Mastepanov, M., Malmer, N., Friborg, T., Crill, P., and Svensson, B. H.: Thawing sub-arctic permafrost: Effects on vegetation and methane emissions, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L04501, https://doi.org/10.1029/2003GL018680, 2004. a
Download
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.
Share
Altmetrics
Final-revised paper
Preprint