Methane is a central player in the fight against climate change. A research team investigating the sources of methane and the role of microbes as a potential solution has discovered something surprising. Experts have identified a small but powerful cause of the worsening global warming crisis; This is why it is not our industrial activities.

In a world-first study, it was revealed that microbes in the environment play an important role in the ongoing increase in global methane emissions. This unexpected finding may help develop more effective mitigation strategies.

They emit methane from microbes

Sylvia Michel is a senior research associate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at CU Boulder.

“Understanding where methane comes from helps us develop effective mitigation strategies. We need more information about these emissions to understand what kind of climate we can expect in the future,” Michel said.

There’s a reason why methane has attracted attention in these discoveries. It is a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for a third of the planet’s warming after industrialization. Although it has a lower presence in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, methane has the ability to retain heat 30 times better. This makes it a formidable foe in the fight against climate change.

“The concentration of methane in air has almost tripled since the 1700s,” said study co-author Professor Jiangnan (Ben) Li.

Reducing methane emissions

Interestingly, this harmful gas methane decomposes within ten years, unlike CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Addressing methane emissions makes a rapid and powerful impact on slowing global warming, making it “low-hanging fruit,” as Lee puts it.

Although research shows that microbes outpace fossil fuels in terms of methane emissions, this does not diminish the importance of reducing fossil fuel consumption to mitigate climate change. Additionally, the team recommends reducing food waste and consuming less red meat as effective measures to reduce individual methane footprints.

understanding criminals

Historically, scientists have identified fossil fuel production as the cause of 30% of global methane emissions. Microbial sources, including wetlands, livestock farming and landfills, account for more than half of these emissions. Archaea, a microorganism that lives in soil and in the intestines of cows, produces methane as a byproduct of the decomposition of organic matter.

The research team collaborated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Boulder Global Monitoring Laboratory. The team identified the sources of methane by analyzing air samples from around the world, examining carbon atoms and isotopes, for example. The laboratory has been measuring methanol isotopes since 1998.

Contribution of microbes to methane emissions

The team used computer simulations to simulate different emissions scenarios. They found that microbial sources caused a dramatic increase in atmospheric methane between 2020 and 2022. Although microbes have contributed significantly to methane emissions since 2007, their share increased significantly in 2020, reaching over 90%.

“Some preliminary studies suggest that human activities, particularly fossil fuels, have been the main source of methane growth in recent years,” said Xin (Lindsay) Lan, a research fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “These studies failed to take into account the isotope profile of methane, which could have led to a different conclusion and an incomplete picture of global methane emissions.”

The real source of methane emissions

It is not yet known whether increasing microbial methane emissions are primarily due to natural sources such as wetlands or human-caused activities such as landfills, livestock farming and agriculture.

Identifying the exact source of emissions is critical to developing individual strategies to combat methane emissions. The research team will use advanced tools and methods to determine the exact source of this methane. This will provide a clearer picture of how human activities and natural processes contribute to global methane emissions.

“In a warming world, it wouldn’t be surprising if any of these sources were emitting more methane,” Michel said.

“Therefore, more methane may remain in the atmosphere to accelerate global warming. So we need to solve the climate crisis, and that actually means solving the CO2 problem.” The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.