| Sources of methaneThermogenic – It is released when fossil fuels are extracted from deep within earth’s crust.Biogenic – It comes from microbial action. |
Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) but it warms the planet more.
- Over a century, methane has a global warming potential 28-times greater than CO2, and even higher over shorter periods like two decades.
- At the U.N. climate talks in 2021, member countries launched the ‘Global Methane Pledge’ to cut the gas’s emissions and slow the planet’s warming.
- Recently, it was reported that microbes have been the biggest sources of methane in the atmosphere, not the burning of fossil fuels.
| Methanogens– These are single-celled micro-organisms, known as archaea, which produce methane.- They thrive in oxygen-deficient environments, such as the digestive tracts of animals, wetlands, rice paddies, landfills, and the sediments of lakes and oceans.- They play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle by converting organic matter into methane. |
While methane is a potent greenhouse gas, its production by methanogens is an essential part of natural ecosystems.
- But human activities like agriculture, dairy farming, and fossil fuel production have further increased methane emissions.
- Both biogenic and thermogenic activities produce different isotopes of methane. Tracking the isotopes is a way to track which sources are the most active
- Studies in the past have pointed to microbes like anaerobic archaea as potentially top contributors of atmospheric methane using satellite data, but this information contains gaps that ground-based models can bridge.
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