Atmospheric observations show accurate reporting and little growth in India’s methane emissions
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Author(s)
Ganesan, Anita L.
Rigby, Matt
Lunt, Mark F.
Parker, Robert J.
Boesch, Hartmut
Goulding, N.
Umezawa, Taku
Zahn, Andreas
Chatterjee, Abhijit
Tiwari, Yogesh K.
Date Issued
October 2017
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Ganesan, Anita L. et al. “Atmospheric Observations Show Accurate Reporting and Little Growth in India’s Methane Emissions.” Nature Communications 8, 1 (October 2017): 836 © 2017 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Changes in tropical wetland, ruminant or rice emissions are thought to have played a role in recent variations in atmospheric methane (CH[subscript 4]) concentrations. India has the world's largest ruminant population and produces ∼ 20% of the world's rice. Therefore, changes in these sources could have significant implications for global warming. Here, we infer India's CH[subscript 4] emissions for the period 2010-2015 using a combination of satellite, surface and aircraft data. We apply a high-resolution atmospheric transport model to simulate data from these platforms to infer fluxes at sub-national scales and to quantify changes in rice emissions. We find that average emissions over this period are 22.0 (19.6-24.3) Tg yr[superscript -1], which is consistent with the emissions reported by India to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change. Annual emissions have not changed significantly (0.2 ± 0.7 Tg yr[superscript -1]) between 2010 and 2015, suggesting that major CH[subscript 4] sources did not change appreciably. These findings are in contrast to another major economy, China, which has shown significant growth in recent years due to increasing fossil fuel emissions. However, the trend in a global emission inventory has been overestimated for China due to incorrect rate of fossil fuel growth. Here, we find growth has been overestimated in India but likely due to ruminant and waste sectors.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Global Change Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-017-00994-7
