The climate gas numbers continue to worry, as NewScientist succinctly summarizes:
Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas jumped again last year, continuing a surge in the past few years that researchers still cannot fully explain.
Atmospheric concentrations of methane climbed by 10.77 parts per billion in 2018, the second highest annual increase in the past two decades, according to provisional data released recently by US agency NOAA.
Methane is a shorter-lived but much more powerful greenhouse than carbon dioxide. The amount finding its way from human and natural sources, which can include everything from oil and gas wells to wetlands, has been rising since 2007. The rate has accelerated in the past four years.
Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway University of London says researchers are very worried about the latest rise. Perhaps even more concerning is the fact no one is entirely sure what is driving the trend.
“The disturbing aspect is, we do not know which processes are responsible for methane increasing as rapidly as it is,” says Ed Dlugokencky of the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA supplies these charts:
Of course, if you don’t know what’s causing the rise, it becomes more difficult to treat the problem. Sure, we might find some technology that’ll suck up the methane and dispose of it, but odds are it’d be easier to deal with at the source. It’s rather like mustard gas: do you want to fix the lungs of the victims, or do you want to just not produce and use it in the first place?
