EGU23-8372, updated on 09 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-8372
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Why atmospheric methane surged in 2020?

Shushi Peng1, Xin Lin2, Rona Thompson3, Yi Xi1, Gang Liu1, Xin Lan4,5, Didier Hauglustaine2, Benjamin Poulter6, Michel Ramonet2, Marielle Saumois2, Yi Yin7, Zhen Zhang8, Bo Zheng9,10, and Philippe Ciais2,11
Shushi Peng et al.
  • 1Peking University, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China
  • 2Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
  • 3Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Kjeller, Norway
  • 4Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences of University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA
  • 5NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO, USA
  • 6Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
  • 7Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
  • 8Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
  • 9Institute of Environment and Ecology, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China
  • 10State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, Beijing, China
  • 11Climate and Atmosphere Research Center (CARE-C), The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus

Methane (CH4) levels in the atmosphere increased by 15.1 ± 0.4 ppb in 2020, the highest annual increase from 1984 to 2020, despite a likely decrease in anthropogenic CH4 emissions during COVID-19 confinements. Here, we used bottom-up and top-down methods to quantify the changes in different sources of CH4, and in its atmospheric sink due to the hydroxyl radical (OH) in 2020 compared to 2019. Bottom-up methods showed that, globally, total anthropogenic emissions slightly decreased by ~1.2 Tg CH4 yr-1, fire emissions were lower than in 2019 by ~6.5 Tg CH4 yr-1, and wetland emissions increased by 6.0 ± 2.3 Tg CH4 yr-1. In addition to higher wetland emissions in 2020 than 2019 from bottom-up, we found a decrease of 1.6–1.8% in tropospheric OH concentration relative to 2019, mainly due to lower anthropogenic NOx emissions and associated lower free tropospheric ozone during the confinements. Based on atmospheric CH4 observations from the surface network, and considering the decrease in OH, using top-down inversions, we infer that global net emissions increased by 6.9 ± 2.1 Tg CH4 yr-1 in 2020 relative to 2019, while the global CH4 removal from reaction with OH in the atmosphere decreased in 2020 by 7.5 ± 0.8 Tg CH4 yr-1. Therefore, we attribute the positive growth rate anomaly of atmospheric CH4 in 2020 relative to 2019 to lower OH sink (53 ± 10%) and higher natural emissions (47 ± 16%), mostly from wetlands. Warmer and wetter climate conditions in the Northern Hemisphere promoted wetland emissions, but fires decreased in the Southern Hemisphere, compared to the previous year. Our study highlights that northern microbial emissions of CH4 are highly sensitive to a warmer and wetter climate and could act as a positive feedback in the future. Our study also hints that the global CH4 pledge must be implemented by taking into account NOx emissions trend, whose reduction lengthens the lifetime of atmospheric CH4.

How to cite: Peng, S., Lin, X., Thompson, R., Xi, Y., Liu, G., Lan, X., Hauglustaine, D., Poulter, B., Ramonet, M., Saumois, M., Yin, Y., Zhang, Z., Zheng, B., and Ciais, P.: Why atmospheric methane surged in 2020?, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-8372, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-8372, 2023.