The global methane budget 2000-2012

The global methane (CH4) budget is becoming an increasingly important component for managing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. This relevance, due to a shorter atmospheric lifetime and a stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, is challenged by the still unexplained changes of atmospheric CH4 over the past decade. Emissions and concentrations of CH4 are continuing to increase, making CH4 the second most important human-induced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Two major difficulties in reducing uncertainties come from the large variety of diffusive CH4 sources that overlap geographically, and from the destruction of CH4 by the very short-lived hydroxyl radical (OH). To address these difficulties, we have established a consortium of multi-disciplinary scientists under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project to synthesize and stimulate research on the methane cycle, and producing regular (biennial) updates of the global methane budget. This consortium includes atmospheric physicists and chemists, biogeochemists of surface and marine emissions, and socio-economists who study anthropogenic emissions. Following Kirschke et al. (2013), we propose here the first version of a living review paper that integrates results of top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an atmospheric inverse-modelling framework) and bottom-up models, inventories and data-driven approaches (including process-based models for estimating land surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry, and inventories for anthropogenic emissions, data-driven extrapolations). For the 2003-2012 decade, global methane emissions are estimated by top-down inversions at 558 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 540-568. About 60 % of global emissions are anthropogenic (range 50-65 %). Since 2010, the bottom-up global emission inventories have been closer to methane emissions in the most carbon-intensive Representative Concentrations Pathway (RCP8.5) and higher than all other RCP scenarios. Bottom-up approaches suggest larger global emissions (736 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 596-884) mostly because of larger natural emissions from individual sources such as inland waters, natural wetlands and geological sources. Considering the atmospheric constraints on the top-down budget, it is likely that some of the individual emissions reported by the bottom-up approaches are overestimated, leading to too large global emissions. Latitudinal data from top-down emissions indicate a predominance of tropical emissions (~64 % of the global budget, < 30° N) as compared to mid (~32 %, 30-60° N) and high northern latitudes (~4 %, 60-90° N). Top-down inversions consistently infer lower emissions in China (∼ 58 Tg CH4 yr-1, range 51-72, -14 %) and higher emissions in Africa (86 Tg CH4 yr-1, range 73-108, +19 %) than bottom-up values used as prior estimates. Overall, uncertainties for anthropogenic emissions appear smaller than those from natural sources, and the uncertainties on source categories appear larger for top-down inversions than for bottom-up inventories and models. The most important source of uncertainty on the methane budget is attributable to emissions from wetland and other inland waters. We show that the wetland extent could contribute 30–40 % on the estimated range for wetland emissions. Other priorities for improving the methane budget include the following: (i) the development of process-based models for inland-water emissions, (ii) the intensification of methane observations at local scale (flux measurements) to constrain bottom-up land surface models, and at regional scale (surface networks and satellites) to constrain top-down inversions, (iii) improvements in the estimation of atmospheric loss by OH, and (iv) improvements of the transport models integrated in top-down inversions. The data presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/GLOBAL_METHANE_BUDGET_2016_V1.1) and the Global Carbon Project.

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Related Dataset #1 : Global Methane Budget 2000-2012 (V.1.0, issued June 2016 and V.1.1, issued December 2016)
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Author Saunois, Marielle
Bousquet, Philippe
Poulter, Ben
Peregon, Anna
Ciais, Philippe
Canadell, Josep G.
Dlugokencky, Edward J.
Etiope, Giuseppe
Bastviken, David
Houweling, Sander
Janssens-Maenhout, Greet
Tubiello, Francesco N.
Castaldi, Simona
Jackson, Robert B.
Alexe, Mihai
Arora, Vivek K.
Beerling, David J.
Bergamaschi, Peter
Blake, Donald R.
Brailsford, Gordon
Brovkin, Victor
Bruhwiler, Lori
Crevoisier, Cyril
Crill, Patrick
Covey, Kristofer
Curry, Charles
Frankenberg, Christian
Gedney, Nicola
Höglund-Isaksson, Lena
Ishizawa, Misa
Ito, Akihiko
Joos, Fortunat
Kim, Heon-Sook
Kleinen, Thomas
Krummel, Paul
Lamarque, Jean-François
Langenfelds, Ray
Locatelli, Robin
Machida, Toshinobu
Maksyutov, Shamil
McDonald, Kyle C.
Marshall, Julia
Melton, Joe R.
Morino, Isamu
Naik, Vaishali
O&apos;Doherty, Simon
Parmentier, Frans-Jan W.
Patra, Prabir K.
Peng, Changhui
Peng, Shushi
Peters, Glen P.
Pison, Isabelle
Prigent, Catherine
Prinn, Ronald
Ramonet, Michel
Riley, William J.
Saito, Makoto
Santini, Monia
Schroeder, Ronny
Simpson, Isobel J.
Spahni, Renato
Steele, Paul
Takizawa, Atsushi
Thornton, Brett F.
Tian, Hanqin
Tohjima, Yasunori
Viovy, Nicolas
Voulgarakis, Apostolos
van Weele, Michiel
van der Werf, Guido R.
Weiss, Ray
Wiedinmyer, Christine
Wilton, David J.
Wiltshire, Andy
Worthy, Doug
Wunch, Debra
Xu, Xiyan
Yoshida, Yukio
Zhang, Bowen
Zhang, Zhen
Zhu, Qiuan
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2016-12-12T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T19:09:32.928812
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:19312
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Saunois, Marielle, Bousquet, Philippe, Poulter, Ben, Peregon, Anna, Ciais, Philippe, Canadell, Josep G., Dlugokencky, Edward J., Etiope, Giuseppe, Bastviken, David, Houweling, Sander, Janssens-Maenhout, Greet, Tubiello, Francesco N., Castaldi, Simona, Jackson, Robert B., Alexe, Mihai, Arora, Vivek K., Beerling, David J., Bergamaschi, Peter, Blake, Donald R., Brailsford, Gordon, Brovkin, Victor, Bruhwiler, Lori, Crevoisier, Cyril, Crill, Patrick, Covey, Kristofer, Curry, Charles, Frankenberg, Christian, Gedney, Nicola, Höglund-Isaksson, Lena, Ishizawa, Misa, Ito, Akihiko, Joos, Fortunat, Kim, Heon-Sook, Kleinen, Thomas, Krummel, Paul, Lamarque, Jean-François, Langenfelds, Ray, Locatelli, Robin, Machida, Toshinobu, Maksyutov, Shamil, McDonald, Kyle C., Marshall, Julia, Melton, Joe R., Morino, Isamu, Naik, Vaishali, O&apos;Doherty, Simon, Parmentier, Frans-Jan W., Patra, Prabir K., Peng, Changhui, Peng, Shushi, Peters, Glen P., Pison, Isabelle, Prigent, Catherine, Prinn, Ronald, Ramonet, Michel, Riley, William J., Saito, Makoto, Santini, Monia, Schroeder, Ronny, Simpson, Isobel J., Spahni, Renato, Steele, Paul, Takizawa, Atsushi, Thornton, Brett F., Tian, Hanqin, Tohjima, Yasunori, Viovy, Nicolas, Voulgarakis, Apostolos, van Weele, Michiel, van der Werf, Guido R., Weiss, Ray, Wiedinmyer, Christine, Wilton, David J., Wiltshire, Andy, Worthy, Doug, Wunch, Debra, Xu, Xiyan, Yoshida, Yukio, Zhang, Bowen, Zhang, Zhen, Zhu, Qiuan. (2016). The global methane budget 2000-2012. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7v126jn. Accessed 25 June 2025.

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