Eliminating CO2 emissions is at the top of the environmental agenda – but the world must not lose sight of the threat of methane. Scientists have noticed a recent worrying increase in atmospheric methane, which is more than 25 times more potent as greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane is still four times more sensitive to global warming than previously thought, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The result helps explain the rapid growth of methane in recent years and suggests that if left unchecked, gas-related warming will increase even more worryingly in the coming decades, the research indicates.

Anthropogenic methane emissions account for about 60% of the total and come mainly from agriculture, in particular beef and rice pads farms, as well as from oil and gas wells, coal mines, sewage treatment plants and landfills. Methane is also emitted naturally from wetlands, sometimes known as swamp or swamp gas, which makes up the remaining 40%.

Scientists were intrigued by the fact that methane emissions have not only grown rapidly since 2007, but have also increased at an even faster pace in the past two years. Despite the pandemic, when blockades and reduced industrial activity may have muffled many sources, methane emissions reached the highest amount ever recorded in 2021. And the amount of methane in the atmosphere keeps growing.

The last four decades of temperature and rain data – which indicate that the Earth is not only delivering more methane to the atmosphere, but removing less of it – may contain the response. In the study, researchers showed that climate change increased the rate at which methane accumulates in the atmosphere, retaining more heat and causing the Earth to heat up faster and potentially releasing more methane in a vicious cycle.

This indicates that climate change has an effect on methane – ultimately increasing its amount in the atmosphere – which is up to four times higher than estimates in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently published in February.

These results are considered "shocking" by scientists, as they highlight a way in which the effects of climate change on the earth's system have been underestimated. The world, researchers say, cannot ignore the worrying sensitivity of methane emissions to rising global temperatures, given the strength of methane as greenhouse gas.

Source: Um só Planeta