Estimating emissions of methane consistent with atmospheric measurements of methane and δ13C of methane (original) (raw)
2022, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
We have constructed an atmospheric inversion framework based on TM5-4DVAR to jointly assimilate measurements of methane and δ 13 C of methane in order to estimate source-specific methane emissions. Here we present global emission estimates from this framework for the period 1999-2016. We assimilate a newly constructed, multi-agency database of CH 4 and δ 13 C measurements. We find that traditional CH 4-only atmospheric inversions are unlikely to estimate emissions consistent with atmospheric δ 13 C data, and assimilating δ 13 C data is necessary to derive emissions consistent with both measurements. Our framework attributes ca. 85 % of the post-2007 growth in atmospheric methane to microbial sources, with about half of that coming from the tropics between 23.5 • N and 23.5 • S. This contradicts the attribution of the recent growth in the methane budget of the Global Carbon Project (GCP). We find that the GCP attribution is only consistent with our top-down estimate in the absence of δ 13 C data. We find that at global and continental scales, δ 13 C data can separate microbial from fossil methane emissions much better than CH 4 data alone, and at smaller scales this ability is limited by the current δ 13 C measurement coverage. Finally, we find that the largest uncertainty in using δ 13 C data to separate different methane source types comes from our knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, specifically the distribution of tropospheric chlorine and the isotopic discrimination of the methane sink.
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.