Articles | Volume 23, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-4863-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-4863-2023
Research article
 | Highlight paper
 | 
25 Apr 2023
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 25 Apr 2023

Methane emissions are predominantly responsible for record-breaking atmospheric methane growth rates in 2020 and 2021

Liang Feng, Paul I. Palmer, Robert J. Parker, Mark F. Lunt, and Hartmut Bösch

Related authors

Global Carbon Budget 2023
Pierre Friedlingstein, Michael O'Sullivan, Matthew W. Jones, Robbie M. Andrew, Dorothee C. E. Bakker, Judith Hauck, Peter Landschützer, Corinne Le Quéré, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Clemens Schwingshackl, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Robert B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Peter Anthoni, Leticia Barbero, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Bertrand Decharme, Laurent Bopp, Ida Bagus Mandhara Brasika, Patricia Cadule, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Naveen Chandra, Thi-Tuyet-Trang Chau, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Margot Cronin, Xinyu Dou, Kazutaka Enyo, Wiley Evans, Stefanie Falk, Richard A. Feely, Liang Feng, Daniel J. Ford, Thomas Gasser, Josefine Ghattas, Thanos Gkritzalis, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Özgür Gürses, Ian Harris, Matthew Hefner, Jens Heinke, Richard A. Houghton, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Andrew R. Jacobson, Atul Jain, Tereza Jarníková, Annika Jersild, Fei Jiang, Zhe Jin, Fortunat Joos, Etsushi Kato, Ralph F. Keeling, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Arne Körtzinger, Xin Lan, Nathalie Lefèvre, Hongmei Li, Junjie Liu, Zhiqiang Liu, Lei Ma, Greg Marland, Nicolas Mayot, Patrick C. McGuire, Galen A. McKinley, Gesa Meyer, Eric J. Morgan, David R. Munro, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Kevin M. O'Brien, Are Olsen, Abdirahman M. Omar, Tsuneo Ono, Melf Paulsen, Denis Pierrot, Katie Pocock, Benjamin Poulter, Carter M. Powis, Gregor Rehder, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian Rödenbeck, Thais M. Rosan, Jörg Schwinger, Roland Séférian, T. Luke Smallman, Stephen M. Smith, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, Qing Sun, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Shintaro Takao, Pieter P. Tans, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Francesco Tubiello, Guido R. van der Werf, Erik van Ooijen, Rik Wanninkhof, Michio Watanabe, Cathy Wimart-Rousseau, Dongxu Yang, Xiaojuan Yang, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle, Jiye Zeng, and Bo Zheng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5301–5369, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5301-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5301-2023, 2023
Short summary
Greenhouse gas column observations from a portable spectrometer in Uganda
Neil Humpage, Hartmut Boesch, William Okello, Jia Chen, Florian Dietrich, Mark F. Lunt, Liang Feng, Paul I. Palmer, and Frank Hase
Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2023-234,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2023-234, 2023
Preprint under review for AMT
Short summary
Atmospheric data support a multi-decadal shift in the global methane budget towards natural tropical emissions
Alice Drinkwater, Paul I. Palmer, Liang Feng, Tim Arnold, Xin Lan, Sylvia E. Michel, Robert Parker, and Hartmut Boesch
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 8429–8452, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-8429-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-8429-2023, 2023
Short summary
Evaluating the consistency between OCO-2 and OCO-3 XCO2 estimates derived from the NASA ACOS version 10 retrieval algorithm
Thomas E. Taylor, Christopher W. O'Dell, David Baker, Carol Bruegge, Albert Chang, Lars Chapsky, Abhishek Chatterjee, Cecilia Cheng, Frédéric Chevallier, David Crisp, Lan Dang, Brian Drouin, Annmarie Eldering, Liang Feng, Brendan Fisher, Dejian Fu, Michael Gunson, Vance Haemmerle, Graziela R. Keller, Matthäus Kiel, Le Kuai, Thomas Kurosu, Alyn Lambert, Joshua Laughner, Richard Lee, Junjie Liu, Lucas Mandrake, Yuliya Marchetti, Gregory McGarragh, Aronne Merrelli, Robert R. Nelson, Greg Osterman, Fabiano Oyafuso, Paul I. Palmer, Vivienne H. Payne, Robert Rosenberg, Peter Somkuti, Gary Spiers, Cathy To, Brad Weir, Paul O. Wennberg, Shanshan Yu, and Jia Zong
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3173–3209, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3173-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3173-2023, 2023
Short summary
Theoretical assessment of the ability of the MicroCarb satellite city-scan observing mode to estimate urban CO2 emissions
Kai Wu, Paul I. Palmer, Dien Wu, Denis Jouglet, Liang Feng, and Tom Oda
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 581–602, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-581-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-581-2023, 2023
Short summary

Related subject area

Subject: Gases | Research Activity: Remote Sensing | Altitude Range: Troposphere | Science Focus: Chemistry (chemical composition and reactions)
Quantifying the tropospheric ozone radiative effect and its temporal evolution in the satellite era
Richard J. Pope, Alexandru Rap, Matilda A. Pimlott, Brice Barret, Eric Le Flochmoen, Brian J. Kerridge, Richard Siddans, Barry G. Latter, Lucy J. Ventress, Anne Boynard, Christian Retscher, Wuhu Feng, Richard Rigby, Sandip S. Dhomse, Catherine Wespes, and Martyn P. Chipperfield
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 3613–3626, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-3613-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-3613-2024, 2024
Short summary
A satellite chronology of plumes from the April 2021 eruption of La Soufrière, St Vincent
Isabelle A. Taylor, Roy G. Grainger, Andrew T. Prata, Simon R. Proud, Tamsin A. Mather, and David M. Pyle
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 15209–15234, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15209-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15209-2023, 2023
Short summary
Pyrogenic HONO seen from space: insights from global IASI observations
Bruno Franco, Lieven Clarisse, Nicolas Theys, Juliette Hadji-Lazaro, Cathy Clerbaux, and Pierre Coheur
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2707,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2707, 2023
Short summary
Investigation of spatial and temporal variability in lower tropospheric ozone from RAL Space UV–Vis satellite products
Richard J. Pope, Brian J. Kerridge, Richard Siddans, Barry G. Latter, Martyn P. Chipperfield, Wuhu Feng, Matilda A. Pimlott, Sandip S. Dhomse, Christian Retscher, and Richard Rigby
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 14933–14947, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14933-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14933-2023, 2023
Short summary
Two years of satellite-based carbon dioxide emission quantification at the world's largest coal-fired power plants
Daniel H. Cusworth, Andrew K. Thorpe, Charles E. Miller, Alana K. Ayasse, Ralph Jiorle, Riley M. Duren, Ray Nassar, Jon-Paul Mastrogiacomo, and Robert R. Nelson
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 14577–14591, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14577-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14577-2023, 2023
Short summary

Cited articles

Bloom, A. A., Bowman, K. W., Lee, M., Turner, A. J., Schroeder, R., Worden, J. R., Weidner, R., McDonald, K. C., and Jacob, D. J.: A global wetland methane emissions and uncertainty dataset for atmospheric chemical transport models (WetCHARTs version 1.0), Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 2141–2156, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2141-2017, 2017. 
Buschmann, M., Petri, C., Palm, M., Warneke, T., and Notholt, J.: TCCON data from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard (NO), Release GGG2020.R0, Caltech Data [data set], https://doi.org/10.14291/tccon.ggg2020.nyalesund01.R0, 2022. 
Ciavarella, A., Cotterill, D., Stott, P., Kew, S., Philip, S., van Oldenborgh, G. J., Skålevåg, A., Lorenz, P., Robin, Y., Otto, F., Hauser, M., Seneviratne, S. I., Lehner, F., and Zolina, O.: Prolonged Siberian heat of 2020 almost impossible without human influence, Climatic Change, 166, 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03052-w, 2021. 
Cooper, M. J., Martin, R. V., Hammer, M. S., Levelt, P. F., Veefkind, P., Lamsal, L. N., Krotkov, N. A., Brook, J. R., and McLinden, C. A.: Global fine-scale changes in ambient NO2 during COVID-19 lockdowns, Nature, 601, 380–387, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04229-0, 2022. 
Download
Executive editor
After a period of near-zero growth of atmospheric methane, a major greenhouse gas, its growth rates have increased, with values in 2020 and 2021 exceeding all prior values since the beginning of systematic measurements in 1983. This recent acceleration, particularly during the covid-19 years 2020 and 2021, raises the question whether the methane increase was due to stronger sources or reduced sinks in the troposphere. A reduction of the tropospheric abundance of the hydroxyl radical (OH), the reaction of which is the main tropospheric methane sink, could be plausibly explained by global-scale reductions in nitrogen oxides due to pandemic-related industry shutdowns. Using an inversion scheme, Feng et al. demonstrate that such a reduction only accounts for about 34% in 2020 and 10% in 2021 of the observed methane rise. Instead, the authors attribute increased methane emissions to hydrological anomalies and microbial sources over the tropics, i.e., Eastern Africa and tropical South America, and temperate North America. The study demonstrates the importance of simultaneously accounting for changes in methane emissions and sinks for an improved quantitative understanding of the evolution of the methane concentrations to assess the role of greenhouse gases in climate change and tropospheric composition.
Short summary
Our understanding of recent changes in atmospheric methane has defied explanation. Since 2007, the atmospheric growth of methane has accelerated to record-breaking values in 2020 and 2021. We use satellite observations of methane to show that (1) increasing emissions over the tropics are mostly responsible for these recent atmospheric changes, and (2) changes in the OH sink during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown can explain up to 34% of changes in atmospheric methane for that year.
Altmetrics
Final-revised paper
Preprint