Yesterday I wrote about the problems associated with the effort to reduce the burning of methane in the form of natural gas. Today I will get back to the problems created by emissions of methane itself, a powerful greenhouse gas, in its natural state. It so happens that a new study is being released today that contains a good bit of updated information about what this problem looks like. It is published by the prestigious Nature journal. You can read a thorough review, including numerous commentaries, in the news release, entitled “Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane,” at this link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00312-2. It is very helpful in gaining a reasonable understanding of where the current, rapidly-growing sources of methane are coming from. Everything points to these being bacterial, due to near-surface decomposition of organic material, as opposed to deep-Earth sources that originated with the creation of fossil fuels and their recent extraction. “The next — and most challenging — step is to try to pin down the relative contributions of microbes from various systems, such as natural wetlands or human-raised livestock and landfills. This may help determine whether warming itself is contributing to the increase, potentially via mechanisms such as increasing the productivity of tropical wetlands.”
You may recall a scientific study that was published last summer which had much more specific things to say about the future course of wetland methane emissions. I wrote about if in four consecutive Climate Letters, starting with #2042 on October 12. The study received no publicity at the time, apart from a press release written in German, and has yet to get any meaningful attention in the science community. I thought the work was credible, persuasive and significantly important, and now suggest that you go back and read my letters and the content of the links that were provided. You’ll find clear answers to the questions being raised by the study just released. The Kleinen study basically proposes that wetland emissions of CH4 have been badly underestimated, and are destined to keep growing at a fast pace as long as the planet’s wetland regions continue to get warmer.
The new study has great value with respect to describing the interpretation of carbon isotopes and how their ratio has been changing in recent years. Note how the sharp change in the trend of these ratios coincides with the accelerated trend of growth in methane concentrations, suggesting that the same thing caused both changes, and could only have been bacterial—which has a large number of potential sources, some entirely natural and some anthropogenic. All major kinds of sources are indicated on a chart, with the latest estimates, but lack any numbers that would indicate the margin of error for each estimate. I think the research should say more about which estimates are strongest, which are weakest, and why, which is what the Kleinen study made an effort to accomplish. If other researchers can offer a rebuttal of the conclusions of the Kleinen study they should go ahead and do so in an open way, point by point.
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Carl