By Gloria Dickey
BAKU (Reuters) – The world’s warming tropical wetlands are releasing more methane than ever before, research shows – an alarming sign that the world’s climate goals are slipping further out of reach. .
Massive increases in wetlands methane – unaccounted for in national emissions plans and under-estimated in scientific models – are forcing governments to make deep cuts from their fossil fuel and agriculture industries, according to the researchers. Can increase pressure.
Wetlands hold huge stores of carbon in the form of dead plant matter that is slowly broken down by soil microbes. Rising temperatures are like hitting the accelerator on this process, speeding up the biological interactions that produce methane. During this time, heavy rains trigger floods that cause wetlands to expand.
Scientists have long predicted that methane emissions would increase as the climate warms, but from 2020 to 2022, air models showed the highest levels since reliable measurements began in the 1980s. I showed the highest concentration of methane.
Four studies published in recent months say tropical wetlands are the most likely culprit for the increase, with the tropics contributing more than 7 million tons of methane over the past few years. .
“Methane concentrations have not only been increasing, they’ve been increasing more rapidly over the last five years,” said Stanford University environmental scientist Rob Jackson, who has been working on a five-year The group heads the publication of the global methane budget, most recently in September
Satellite instruments showed the tropics to be a source of massive upwelling. The scientists further analyzed the various chemical signatures in the methane to determine whether it came from fossil fuels or from a natural source — in this case, wetlands.
Congo, Southeast Asia and the Amazon (NASDAQ: ) and southern Brazil contributed most to the increase in tropical regions, the researchers found.
Data published in March 2023 in Nature Climate Change showed that annual wetland emissions over the past two decades were about 500,000 tonnes per year more than scientists had projected under worst-case climates.
Capturing emissions from wetlands is difficult with current technologies.
“We should probably be a little more worried than we are,” said Drew Schindel, a climate scientist at Duke University.
According to a study published in September in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the La Niña climate pattern, which brings heavy rains to parts of the tropics, appeared to be partly responsible for the increase.
But La Niña alone, which last ended in 2023, cannot explain the record high emissions, Schendel said.
For countries trying to deal with climate change, “this has huge implications when planning to reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions,” said Xin Qiu, an environmental chemist at North Carolina State University who Led a study on the effects of La Niña.
If wetland methane emissions continue to rise, scientists say governments will need to take drastic action to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), as stipulated in the United Nations’ Paris climate agreement. It has been agreed.
Water World
Methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat over a 20-year period, and accounts for about a third of the 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 F) the world has registered since 1850. Unlike CO2, however, methane washes out of the atmosphere after about a decade, so it has little long-term impact.
More than 150 countries have pledged to deliver a 30 percent reduction from 2020 levels by 2030 to address leaking oil and gas infrastructure.
But scientists have yet to observe a slowdown, even as technologies to detect methane emissions have improved. According to the International Energy Agency’s 2024 Global Methane Tracker report, methane emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high of 120 million tons since 2019.
Satellites have also picked up more than 1,000 large methane plumes from oil and gas operations over the past two years, but notified countries responded to only 12 leaks, according to a UN Environment Program report published on Friday.
Some countries have announced ambitious plans to cut methane.
China said last year it would try to prevent flaring or spills at oil and gas wells.
President Joe Biden’s administration last week finalized a methane fee for major oil and gas producers, but it is likely to be scrapped by the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister, Eve Bazaiba, told Reuters on the sidelines of the UN climate summit COP29 that the country is working to assess methane emissions from the swamp forests and wetlands of the Congo Basin. Congo was the largest methane emission hotspot in the tropics in the 2024 methane budget report.
“We don’t know how much [methane is coming off our wetlands]”He said.” That’s why we bring in people who can invest like that, also monitor to take inventory, how much we have, how we can exploit them.”
