Where is methane found most frequently

By , it had increased to 1, ppb. Before the Industrial Revolution, concentrations held steady at about ppb. But the rate of increase in recent decades has varied. From the s until , methane was rising about 12 ppb per year.

Then came roughly a decade of slower growth at 3 ppb per year. Between and , atmospheric methane concentrations stabilized. Starting in , they began to rise again and have continued to do so since, increasing at a rate of 6 ppb per year.

Atmospheric methane has continued to increase, though the rate of the increase has varied considerably over time and puzzled experts. Most experts agree on the cause of the slowdown in the s.

They attribute it to drier conditions in the tropics, along with a decrease in fossil fuel use and agricultural emissions following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The cause of the recent increase remains a topic of study and debate, explained Ed Dlugokencky, a NOAA scientist who leads a team monitoring methane trends.

There are hints that increased fossil fuel emissions in North America and increasing emissions from tropical wetlands could be playing important roles, but the details are muddled.

Methane emissions related to human activity are on the rise. Scientists hope that a new network of sensors will be able to decipher the distinct chemical fingerprints of different methane sources. Different processes produce different proportions of heavy and light methane. Wetlands, for instance, tend to emit methane with a lighter isotopic fingerprint that is characteristic of gas produced by microbes.

A heavier isotopic fingerprint is usually associated with methane recovered with fossil fuels. There are signs in the isotopic data that suggest agricultural sources or wetlands have contributed significantly to the increase since However, some of the details are still disputed or fuzzy.

In the end, it might not be just one thing or another; it could be a mix of several factors. In nighttime satellite imagery, the light from Eagle Ford competes with nearby cities of San Antonio and Austin.

The electric glow of drilling equipment and worker camps combines with flickering gas flares to create an unmistakable arc of light across southeastern Texas. Gas flares mingle with other nighttime lights that shimmer across the Eagle Ford Shale Play in Texas. In daylight, the view is just as stunning. In the early s, the area was sleepy scrubland. By , a bustling network of roads and rectangular drill pads had completely transformed the landscape.

Satellite imagery reveals just how much natural gas drilling has changed the landscape within the Eagle Ford Shale Play. Use the interactive slider to compare the images. Geological Survey. While the oil and gas industry has fractured rock formations to get more oil for decades, the fracking boom in recent years has changed the game.

Energy companies have recently developed techniques to drill horizontally as well as vertically into shale deposits. By pumping large volumes of water into boreholes miles below the surface, they fracture shale and liberate natural gas, which is mainly methane. Since , the contribution of coal to the U. Energy Information Agency. In April , natural gas surpassed coal as the primary source of electricity not including heating in the United States.

Until the early 20 th century, wood and coal dominated US energy use heating and electricity. Petroleum, followed by natural gas, quickly took over. Coal usage is currently in decline while natural gas consumption undergoes another increase. Some scientists and policymakers have argued that a shift from coal and oil to natural gas has the potential to slow down the rate of global warming because burning methane generates about half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal.

Fossil fuel extraction and distribution processes can leak significant amounts of unburned natural gas. Some of the leakage occurs at the wellhead, when wells are first being drilled. So while methane may be cleaner to burn, it is much more potent than carbon dioxide if it is released directly into the atmosphere without being burned. In order to achieve an immediate climate benefit from natural gas, most scientists think the cumulative leakage should be no more than 3.

Beyond that, the extra warming caused by the leaked methane outweighs the potential benefit. Natural gas withdrawals in the United States are increasing at the same time global atmospheric concentrations of methane are increasing.

Fuel extraction is not the only reason for the rise, but scientists are working hard to figure out where and how much natural gas is leaking. Determining how much methane is leaking is not straightforward, and while several research groups have attempted to pin the leak rate down, there is little consensus. Estimates from government agencies and individual researchers—based on observations from the ground, sky, and space—range from 1.

Some scientists are trying to use satellites to spot leakage from fracking infrastructure. Schneising and colleagues found a significant increase in the concentration of methane over both gas fields as drilling activities ramped up.

Methane concentrations were so high between and that Schneising estimated the leakage rate at about 10 percent. He asserts that a widely used ground-based sensor has a software flaw that causes it to dramatically underestimate methane emissions. Until we know more, this should give pause to anyone promoting shale gas as a bridge fuel. Nearly one quarter of the ice-free land in the northern hemisphere has permafrost beneath it. This amounts to 23 million square miles of permafrost.

Scientists estimate that five times as much carbon might be stored in frozen Arctic soils as have been emitted by all human activities since This worries people who study global warming. While emissions from permafrost currently account for less than 1 percent of global methane emissions, some researchers think that this could change in dramatic ways as the world warms and that carbon-rich frozen soil—permafrost—breaks down.

When permafrost gets warm enough, the soil thaws and microbial activity increases. Both processes release extra methane into the atmosphere.

Large sections of exposed permafrost are visible after a portion of Alaska's coastal tundra collapsed. Katey Walter Anthony, a hydrologist at the University of Alaska—Fairbanks, has mapped more than , methane seeps near the boundaries of thawing permafrost and receding glaciers. The seeps appear as holes in frozen lakes and rivers that, on close inspection, are bubbling with gas. Her team has found that they can actually light such seeps on fire.

The methane seeps that Anthony has found are not necessarily caused by global warming, and there is no way to know how the number today compares to the number that existed during earlier periods. But the simple existence of such seeps illustrates how methane could theoretically escape when underlying soils and waters emerge from beneath ice cover. Professor Katey Walter Anthony discusses methane, frozen lakes, and implications for climate change. Video by University of Alaska Fairbanks. To date, scientists have uncovered little evidence that emissions from permafrost have increased.

No satellite has detected anything unusual either, but making observations in the Arctic is challenging due to cloud cover and limited light during winter. To better understand current methane emissions from permafrost—and to set a baseline for monitoring future changes—NASA scientists recently outfitted a C Sherpa aircraft with sensors to measure carbon dioxide and methane.

Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities. Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential.

China, the United States, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico are estimated to be responsible for nearly half of all anthropogenic methane emissions.

The major methane emission sources for these countries vary greatly. For example, a key source of methane emissions in China is coal production, whereas Russia emits most of its methane from natural gas and oil systems. The largest sources of methane emissions from human activities in the United States are oil and gas systems, livestock enteric fermentation, and landfills.

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