Half of global methane emissions come from highly variable aquatic ecosystem sources

Atmospheric methane is a potent greenhouse gas that plays a major role in controlling the Earth’s climate. The causes of the renewed increase of methane concentration since 2007 are uncertain given the multiple sources and complex biogeochemistry. Here, we present a metadata analysis of methane flux...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature geoscience Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 225 - 230
Main Authors: Rosentreter, Judith A., Borges, Alberto V., Deemer, Bridget R., Holgerson, Meredith A., Liu, Shaoda, Song, Chunlin, Melack, John, Raymond, Peter A., Duarte, Carlos M., Allen, George H., Olefeldt, David, Poulter, Benjamin, Battin, Tom I., Eyre, Bradley D.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Goddard Space Flight Center Springer Nature 01.04.2021
Nature Publishing Group UK
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
704/106/286
704/106/47/4113
704/106/694/2739
704/47/4113
Anthropogenic factors
Aquatic ecosystems
Aquatic environment
Aquatic sciences & oceanology
Atmospheric methane
Biogeochemistry
CH4
Climate
Climate change
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Earth Sciences
Earth System Sciences
Ecosystems
Emissions control
Empirical analysis
Eutrophication
Fluxes
Freshwater
Freshwater ecosystems
Geochemistry
Geology
Geophysics/Geodesy
Greenhouse gases
Inland water environment
lake
Land management
Land use
Land use management
Life sciences
Methane
Methane emissions
Mitigation
river
Sampling designs
Sciences aquatiques & océanologie
Sciences du vivant
Skewed distributions
Urbanization
Aquatic Ecosystem
Methane Ch4
ISSN:1752-0894, 1752-0908, 1752-0908
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Atmospheric methane is a potent greenhouse gas that plays a major role in controlling the Earth’s climate. The causes of the renewed increase of methane concentration since 2007 are uncertain given the multiple sources and complex biogeochemistry. Here, we present a metadata analysis of methane fluxes from all major natural, impacted and human-made aquatic ecosystems. Our revised bottom-up global aquatic methane emissions combine diffusive, ebullitive and/or plant-mediated fluxes from 15 aquatic ecosystems. We emphasize the high variability of methane fluxes within and between aquatic ecosystems and a positively skewed distribution of empirical data, making global estimates sensitive to statistical assumptions and sampling design. We find aquatic ecosystems contribute (median) 41% or (mean) 53% of total global methane emissions from anthropogenic and natural sources. We show that methane emissions increase from natural to impacted aquatic ecosystems and from coastal to freshwater ecosystems. We argue that aquatic emissions will probably increase due to urbanization, eutrophication and positive climate feedbacks and suggest changes in land-use management as potential mitigation strategies to reduce aquatic methane emissions.
Bibliography:GSFC
Goddard Space Flight Center
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
scopus-id:2-s2.0-85103672100
ISSN:1752-0894
1752-0908
1752-0908
DOI:10.1038/s41561-021-00715-2