Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Methane is a crucial greenhouse gas whose emission reduction can effectively mitigate climate change on a decadal time scale. Our study explores methane emission characteristics from point sources to global scale. Example findings are as follows.

Point Sources: Methane emission estimates from major livestock and waste operations in the agricultural US Midwest are biased by 40%–80%, revealing large inherent uncertainties in extrapolating limited in-situ data to larger scales.

Regional: We quantified the importance of the US Upper Midwest for the national methane budget. The region includes extensive wetlands and is a world center for livestock operations. Our research reveals substantial carbon mitigation opportunities for the area, that up to 4.5 Tg/y emission reductions could be achieved through widespread deployment of anaerobic digestion.

Global: Interpreting two years of space-based methane measurements from TROPOMI, we showed that two key regions contributing to the accelerating methane growth are the Middle East (with rapid emission increases from fossil fuel explorations) and South Asia (with strong seasonal emissions linked to Monsoon rainfall).