JULES Modelling of Tropical Wetland Methane

Tropical peatlands constitute the largest and most uncertain natural source of methane. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, with a 100-year global warming potential approximately 30 times that of carbon dioxide, and accounting for around one quarter of total anthropogenic radiative forcing.

Natural wetlands contribute roughly one-third of global methane emissions, while tropical wetlands dominate this flux due to their high productivity, warm temperatures, and persistently waterlogged conditions. However, significant uncertainties remain in estimating current methane budgets and in understanding how environmental drivers, such as temperature, hydrology, and soil carbon availability, interact to regulate tropical wetland methane emissions.

Robust digital twins of tropical methane regions are being developed with The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) to address these gaps. A first step towards achieving this understanding is the evaluation of JULES wetland methane emissions across different model configurations, exploring dependencies related to forcing data, temperature sensitivity and wetland extent. The model will be tightly coupled with Earth observation data to develop a near–real-time framework that enhances process-level understanding of methane dynamics while reducing uncertainty in emission estimates. The resulting improved model representations will inform projections of future methane emission rates under a range of ISIMIP climate scenarios.

These analyses will together deliver policy-relevant insights into the magnitude, variability, sensitivities, and temporal evolution of methane emissions across near- and long-term horizons, supporting climate assessments and informing mitigation and adaptation strategies.