Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane on Earth, a potent greenhouse gas that is 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere. A team of researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) conducted an analysis of wetland methane emissions data across the entire Boreal-Arctic region and discovered that these emissions have increased by approximately 9% since 2002.
Scientists believe that the rise in wetland methane emissions is due to the increasing temperatures in Boreal and Arctic ecosystems, which are rising at about four times the global average rate. However, monitoring emissions in these vast and often water-logged environments has been challenging until now.
“Boreal and Arctic environments are rich in carbon and are susceptible to warming,” explains Qing Zhu, a research scientist at Berkeley Lab. Along with Berkeley Lab postdoctoral researcher Kunxiaojia Yuan, Zhu is the senior author of a new study that analyzed data collected from advanced monitoring methods to identify the 9% emissions increase over the past two decades.
Their approach is described in a paper published in Nature Climate Change this week.
“Rising temperatures lead to increased microbial activity and vegetation growth,” Zhu adds, “which are linked to emissions of gases like methane. Understanding how natural methane sources are changing allows for more accurate monitoring of greenhouse gases, providing scientists with valuable information about the current and future state of climate change.”
2024-02-16 02:00:05
Article from phys.org
