Photo: Collected
Concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere are rising at an accelerating pace, threatening efforts by countries to meet their climate targets, researchers warned Tuesday.
"Methane is rising faster in relative terms than any major greenhouse gas and is now 2.6-fold higher than in pre-industrial times," said an international group of researchers under the aegis of the Global Carbon Project in a study published in Environmental Research Letters.
Methane is the second-largest greenhouse gas produced by human activity after carbon dioxide, with agriculture, energy production and organic waste rotting in landfills the major sources.
In the first 20 years its impact on the atmosphere is about 80 times that of carbon dioxide, but it breaks down quicker.
That opens a possibility to sharply reduce climate impact in the short term, but the researchers found that despite efforts to cut methane emissions that atmospheric concentrations of the gas are still rising.
Messenger/Disha
