According to estimates from the US government, the amount of methane in the air on Earth will reach a record high in 2021.
For the second year in a row, the rise in greenhouse gas emissions has been seen, raising concerns about the consequences on climate change.
In 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) determined that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere had increased by 17 ppb.
This appears to be the most people participating in the climb in a single year since it began in 1983. In 2020, the previous record was 15.3 ppb.
NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad stated, “Our data suggest that global emissions continue to increase in the wrong direction at a rapid pace. “. Consistent, startling, and irrefutable proof” can be found.
Methane levels are now more than double the pre-industrial level of 720 parts per billion, according to NOAA and the University of Colorado atmospheric scientist Lindsay Lan.
It is true that methane is a strong heat-trapping greenhouse gas, but its effects are also transient in nature.
Lan explains that while it has a heat-trapping capacity around 25 times more than carbon dioxide, it only lasts nine years in the atmosphere, as opposed to carbon dioxide’s thousands of years.
According to Robert Howarth, a Cornell University methane specialist, “This trend of accelerated growth in methane is quite worrying.”
