Methane emissions are predominantly responsible for record-breaking atmospheric methane growth rates in 2020 and 2021
Authors: Feng Liang , Palmer Paul I. , Parker Robert J. , Lunt Mark F. , Bösch Hartmut 
Published: April 2023

Abstract. The global atmospheric methane growth rates reported by NOAA for
2020 and 2021 are the largest since systematic measurements began in 1983.
To explore the underlying reasons for these anomalous growth rates, we use
newly available methane data from the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing
SATellite (GOSAT) to estimate methane surface emissions. Relative to
baseline values in 2019, we find that a significant global increase in methane emissions of 27.0 ± 11.3 and 20.8 ± 11.4 Tg is needed to reproduce observed atmospheric methane in 2020 and 2021, respectively,
assuming fixed climatological values for OH. We see the largest annual
increases in methane emissions during 2020 over Eastern Africa (14 ± 3 Tg), tropical Asia (3 ± 4 Tg), tropical South America (5 ± 4 Tg),
and temperate Eurasia (3 ± 3 Tg), and the largest reductions are observed over China
(−6 ± 3 Tg) and India (−2 ± 3 Tg). We find comparable emission
changes in 2021, relative to 2019, except for tropical and temperate South
America where emissions increased by 9 ± 4 and 4 ± 3 Tg,
respectively, and for temperate North America where emissions increased by
5 ± 2 Tg. The elevated contributions we saw in 2020 over the western
half of Africa (−5 ± 3 Tg) are substantially reduced in 2021, compared
to our 2019 baseline. We find statistically significant positive
correlations between anomalies of tropical methane emissions and
groundwater, consistent with recent studies that have highlighted a growing
role for microbial sources over the tropics. Emission reductions over India
and China are expected in 2020 due to the Covid-19 lockdown but continued in
2021, which we do not currently understand. To investigate the role of
reduced OH concentrations during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 on the elevated
atmospheric methane growth in 2020–2021, we extended our inversion state
vector to include monthly scaling factors for OH concentrations over six
latitude bands. During 2020, we find that tropospheric OH is reduced by
1.4 ± 1.7 % relative to the corresponding 2019 baseline value. The
corresponding revised global growth of a posteriori methane emissions in 2020 decreased
by 34 % to 17.9 ± 13.2 Tg, relative to the a posteriori value that we inferred
using fixed climatological OH values, consistent with sensitivity tests
using the OH climatology inversion using reduced values for OH. The counter
statement is that 66 % of the global increase in atmospheric methane
during 2020 was due to increased emissions, particularly from tropical
regions. Regional flux differences between the joint methane–OH inversion
and the OH climatology inversion in 2020 are typically much smaller than
10 %. We find that OH is reduced by a much smaller amount during 2021 than in
2020, representing about 10 % of the growth of atmospheric methane in that
year. Therefore, we conclude that most of the observed increase in
atmospheric methane during 2020 and 2021 is due to increased emissions, with
a significant contribution from reduced levels of OH.