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from the does-this-mean-I-can-fart-again? dept.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-108&rn=news.xml&rst=6814
A new NASA- and Department of Energy-funded study finds that recent increases in global methane levels observed since 2007 are not necessarily due to increasing emissions, but instead may be due to changes in how long methane remains in the atmosphere after it is emitted.
The second most important human-produced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, methane is colorless, odorless and can be hard to track. The gas has a wide range of sources, from decomposing biological material to leaks in natural gas pipelines. In the early 2000s, atmospheric scientists studying methane found that its global concentration -- which had increased for decades, driven by methane emissions from fossil fuels and agriculture -- leveled off as the sources of methane reached a balance with its destruction mechanisms. The methane levels remained stable for a few years, then unexpectedly started rising again in 2007, a trend that is still continuing.
Previous studies of the renewed increase have focused on high-latitude wetlands or fossil fuels, Asian agricultural growth, or tropical wetlands as potential sources of the increased emissions. But in a study published today in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Caltech in Pasadena, California; and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, suggest that methane emissions might not have increased dramatically in 2007 after all.
Ambiguity in the causes for decadal trends in atmospheric methane and hydroxyl (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1616020114) (DX)
Additional reading:
http://www.caltech.edu/news/detergent-molecules-may-be-driving-fluctuations-atmospheric-methane-concentrations-54742
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @03:57PM (3 children)
Here I was, thinking the science of climate change is settled. John Kerry said so. These particular scientists must be some of those merchants of doubt we've been hearing about. Could it be that the carbon cycle is also not really understood, and neither is the precise role of H2O as gas or in clouds? Let me quote from the 2001 National Academies report [nap.edu]:
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:19PM (2 children)
The basic science is settled. You're saying something akin to "Well it used to be all computers were beige, but now? Black! Red! Two-tone even! And you tell me computer science is settled?!"
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @07:53PM (1 child)
Read the quote. Fundamental uncertainties remain. The feedback effect of water is not a detail.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 23 2017, @11:58PM
> Fundamental uncertainties remain.
Yes, uncertainties remain. Do you conclude that we ought to burn all the coal?
https://web.archive.org/web/20170407124854/https://www.blm.gov/ [archive.org]
> The feedback effect of water is not a detail.
You're right. Do you mean to imply that a change in the availability of water is an ultimate cause of global warming? With ocean covering ~3/4 of the Earth, but ~1/2 of all land now under cultivation (couldn't be arsed to look up either figure), that would seem to be a possibility. Deforestation also affects the water cycle, and we've done quite a lot of that, too. This paper, however, says nothing at all about water.