This summer was the hottest ever recorded on Earth, and 2023 is on track to be the hottest year. Heat waves threatened people’s health across North America, Europe and Asia. Canada had its worst wildfire season ever, and flames devastated the city of Lahaina in Maui. Los Angeles was pounded by an unheard-of summer tropical storm while rains in Libya caused devastating floods that left thousands dead and missing. This extreme weather is a warning sign that we are living in a climate crisis, and a call to action.
That’s because it’s relatively short-lived in the atmosphere — methane lasts about 12 years, while CO2 can stick around for hundreds of years. And on a molecule-per-molecule basis, methane is more potent. Over the 20-year period after it’s emitted, methane can warm the atmosphere more than 80 times as much as an equivalent amount of CO2.
We already have strategies for cutting methane emissions — fixing natural gas leaks (methane is the main component of natural gas), phasing out coal (mining operations release methane), eating less meat and dairy (cows burp up lots of methane) and electrifying transportation and appliances. Implementing all existing methane-mitigation strategies could slow global warming by 30 percent over the next decade, research has shown.
But some climate scientists, including Jackson, say we need to go further. Several methane sources will be difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate. That includes some human-caused emissions, such as those produced by rice paddies and cattle farming — though practices do exist to reduce these emissions (SN: 11/28/15, p. 22). Some natural sources are poised to release more methane as the world warms. There are signs that tropical wetlands are already releasing more of the gas into the atmosphere, and rapid warming in the Arctic could turn permafrost into a hot spot for methane-making microbes and release a bomb of methane stored in the currently frozen soil.
2023-11-28 10:00:00
Original from www.sciencenews.org
