What has driven the interannual variability of atmospheric methane concentrations over the last three decades?

Abstract:

Atmospheric methane (CH₄) is the second most anthropogenic greenhouse gas (IPCC, 2013). Observations of methane concentrations at the surface from the last three decades show puzzling fluctuations; from the early 1980s they indicate a nearly constant increase of 8.7 ppbv/year until 2000, including a slowdown after 1990. After a period of about eight years with near zero growh rates, methane concentrations have again been rising since 2007 (Sussmann et al., 2012).

Simulations forced with prescribed meteorological fields have been performed for the 1980-2010 period using the chemistry-climate model (CCM) SOCOL. 48 methane tracers have been included in SOCOL and used together with flux boundary conditions for CH₄ to allow the tracking of methane emissions from different source categories, such as wetlands, rice paddies, ruminants, industry…, as well as geographical regions. These new simulations provide an innovative way to better understand methane variability, both in terms of emission changes and changes in tropospheric OH, which is investigated with a tracer based on methyl chloroform emissions.

An analysis of the tracers elucidates the impact of different emission source categories for different time periods. For 1980-1990, positive gobal methane growth rates result from increasing anthropogenic emissions over Europe, India, and China. A decrease of anthropogenic emissions over Europe after 1990 is consistent with the slow down in the global methane growth rate for 1990-2000. During this period short-lived events such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo and the strong 1997-1998 El-Niño also affect global methane concentrations, largely by a decrease in wetlands emissions during 1992 and high levels of biomass burning in tropical Asia, respectively. The near-zero trend is maintained after 2000 because of reduced natural emissions, again from wetlands. After 2005, our simulations show a positive global methane growth rate, in agreement with the observations, due to the increase of emissions from coal mining in China.