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Updated: Sep 30, 2025

Visualizing Methane-Cycling Microbial Dynamics in Coastal Wetlands
Published on: January 31, 2025
Tropical methane emissions explain large fraction of recent changes in global atmospheric methane growth rate
Liang Feng1,2, Paul I Palmer3,4, Sihong Zhu2,5
1National Centre for Earth Observation, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract:
Large variations in the growth of atmospheric methane, a prominent greenhouse gas, are driven by a diverse range of anthropogenic and natural emissions and by loss from oxidation by the hydroxyl radical. We used a decade-long dataset (2010-2019) of satellite observations of methane to show that tropical terrestrial emissions explain more than 80% of the observed changes in the global atmospheric methane growth rate over this period. Using correlative meteorological analyses, we show strong seasonal correlations (r = 0.6-0.8) between large-scale changes in sea surface temperature over the tropical oceans and regional variations in methane emissions (via changes in rainfall and temperature) over tropical South America and tropical Africa. Existing predictive skill for sea surface temperature variations could therefore be used to help forecast variations in global atmospheric methane.
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