Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas contributing to human-induced global warming. Atmospheric methane concentrations have increased sharply since 2007, and dramatically in 2014, for reasons that are not understood.
The overall increase since 2007 is comparable to the largest growth events over the past 1000 years.
The recent rises have occurred worldwide, but after an Arctic pulse in 2007, the growth has been primarily in the tropics and southern hemisphere. Strong growth continues in 2015. Carbon isotopic evidence suggests that the increase is due to sources that are predominantly biogenic in origin, with changes in the anthropogenic sources from fossil carbon and burning (e.g., natural gas leakage, coal mining and so on) playing a subordinate role. This, taken with the tropical locus on growth, suggests that the increase has primarily been driven by meteorological change (e.g., temperature, rainfall). Moreover, the global methane budget is currently not well understood. "Bottom-up" estimates, made by aggregating inventories of emissions (e.g. from gas leaks, fires, landfills, cows, etc) or from process models (e.g., wetlands) balanced with known loss processes, are significantly different from ‘"top-down" budgets assessed by direct measurement of methane in the atmosphere. Why this discrepancy occurs is not known. The project has four components:
1. Better Observations are needed to derive estimates of emissions. The project will support a UK observation network for methane and its isotopes. Continuous stations will be at Kjolnes (Norway), Weybourne, Jersey, NERC ship RRS JC Ross, Cape Verde, Ascension, Falklands, Halley Bay, Hong Kong, with partner stations in Canada, Spitsbergen, Bolivia, S. Africa, India, Rwanda and Malaysia. Flask or bag sampling (for methane, 13C and D/H isotopes) will also be undertaken at these stations and at a number of continental stations in S. America, Africa and S, SE and E Asia, with offline analysis in the UK. A D/H measurement facility will be set up. The UK FAAM aircraft will carry out flights across the Atlantic tropics, from Azores to Cape Verde to Ascension. 2. Process Studies will address the largest information gaps in the global budget. Tropical emission fluxes and isotopic signatures are not well constrained. Field campaigns will be undertaken in tropical wetlands in Amazonia, Africa, India and SE Asia, and C4 savanna biomass burn regions. Poorly understood anthropogenic sources will be studied in Kuwait and S, SE and E Asia. Characteristic isotopic signatures of regional emissions will be determined, to support global and regional modelling. Land surface modelling and satellite studies will study emissions and responses to change in temperature and precipitation. Major sink processes will be investigated in the tropical atmosphere, with vertically and latitudinally resolved OH and Cl budget studies by the FAAM aircraft, and quantification of tropical uptake by soils. 3. Atmospheric modelling will be used to derive regional and global fluxes, apportioned by source type and geography using integrated in situ and remote sensing observing systems. We will carry out regional trajectory studies using models like NAME to assess regional emissions. Global modelling using 3D models will test synthetic estimates of the methane mole fraction and isotopic record. Global inverse modelling for mole fraction, 13C and D/H will be used to estimate fluxes by geographic source and source type, including a comprehensive assessment of the uncertainties that remain once all available observations have been used. 4. Integrative studies will use the results from the project to test top-down and bottom-up emission estimates, and evaluate the responses of the global methane budget to projections of climate change. The project will deliver a state of the art greenhouse gas monitoring network and much better knowledge of the global methane budget.