{"id":348695,"date":"2024-10-24T09:55:10","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T07:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=348695"},"modified":"2024-10-24T09:55:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T07:55:13","slug":"mysterious-record-methane-surge-since-2020-was-not-fossil-fuels-but-90-due-to-microbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=348695","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious record methane surge since 2020 was not fossil fuels but \u201c90% due to microbes\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
27 December 2021, Brandenburg, Sieversdorf: Bubbles, formed by rising methane gas, are seen frozen in the ice on a lake. Photo: Patrick Pleul\/dpa-Zentralbild\/ZB (Photo by Patrick Pleul\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From JoNova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jo Nova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody checked the carbon-13 ratios!<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Wouldn\u2019t you know it \u2014 150 nations signed the Global Methane Pledge<\/a> without even bothering to check if the methane was man-made.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methane \u2014 the second most hated Greenhouse gas \u2014 spiked to record historic levels in the last few years, over 1,900 parts per billion<\/a>.  In 2019, even the WEF scientists admitted they couldn\u2019t explain the baffling rise,<\/a> and then in 2020, the world of methane went into the twilight zone.  We shut down the modern world due to the pandemic, and methane levels rose even faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems many have been blaming fossil fuels for the global surge in emissions, but forgot to check the C13 isotopes. Somehow we spend millions on breathalysing cows<\/a>, measuring their burps, and feeding them seaweed, but didn\u2019t think to do the basic chemistry. How could that be, you might wonder\u2026 158 nations agreed to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, but none of them audited the science even though very strange things were happening. (The point was obviously the \u201cpledge\u201d, the junkets, the captive industries and subsidies, anything but the science).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methane from fossil fuels has a higher carbon-13 ratio, but even though fossil fuel use was rising, the carbon-13 levels of atmospheric methane was rolling down a hill. Indeed this new study shows it\u2019s been falling for 17 years.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not like this snuck up on us\u2026.  any inquiring mind should have seen this coming a decade ago. The lab has been recording C13 in methane since 1998 and gets air samples from 22 sites around the world every week or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(A) Trend of globally averaged CH4 abundance (in gray) and \u03b413CCH4 (purple) from the NOAA\/GML GGGRN. Mean growth rates of CH4 mole fraction and \u03b413CCH4 are shown for the following time periods: 1983\u20131998, 1999\u20132006, 2008\u20132014, 2014\u20132020, and 2020\u20132022. (B) Colocated \u03b413CCH4 measurements at Alert (Canada), Svalbard (Norway), and Antarctica by INSTAAR, NIWA, TU\/NIPR, and MPI. Each dataset is fitted with a trend in the same color.\u00a0PNAS<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the press release:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microbes in environment drove methane emissions more than fossil fuels between 2020 and 2022, analysis finds<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

They found that between 2020 and 2022, the drastic increase in atmospheric methane was driven almost entirely by microbial sources. Since 2007, scientists have observed microbes playing a significant role in methane emissions, but their contribution has surged to over 90% starting in 2020.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome prior studies have suggested that human activities, especially fossil fuels, were the primary source of methane growth in recent years,\u201d said Xin (Lindsay) Lan\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese studies failed to look at the isotope profile of methane\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They go on to mention that in a warmer world, bacteria have a higher metabolism, which means they are happier and work faster. Thus, like CO2, if the world warms for any reason at all, methane will rise \u2014 and there is nothing we can do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one last straw they could clutch is that maybe the microbes were \u201cman-made\u201d :<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It remains unclear whether the increased microbial emissions came from natural sources like wetlands or human-driven sources, such as landfills and agriculture. The team plans to delve deeper to identify the exact source of methane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As if somehow there was a surge in landfill, rice paddies or cows in the last few years that no one had noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a pretty big deal \u2014 methane has supposedly caused about 30% of our current temperature ris<\/a>e (says the broken climate models) yet 90% of that recent rise was microbes. It\u2019s yet another slice of the climate we aren\u2019t controlling, but we\u2019re still designing burgers with mealworms and bacon from fungus, in the hope of reducing methane emissions and controlling the weather.  Then it turns out every swamp and square meter of soil is working against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methane concentrations in the air have almost tripled since the 1700s, but that was the Little Ice Age.  It\u2019s easy to believe that as the world warmed up, the planet\u2019s wetlands and soil microbes have just been returning to normal business for the last 300 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We skeptics told the experts long ago it was mostly not man-made, Tom Quirk showed that methane rises and falls in time with El Ninos<\/a>, and was thus largely a natural phenomenon. Willie Soon also pointed out that one of Saturn\u2019s moons has more methane than all the oil and gas deposits on Earth<\/a>, but has no dinosaurs, cows or leaky wells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REFERENCE<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Michel, Sylvia Englund, et al (2024) Rapid shift in methane carbon isotopes suggests microbial emissions drove record high atmospheric methane growth in 2020\u20132022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>. DOI: 10.1073\/pnas.2411212121<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Methane \u2014 the second most hated Greenhouse gas \u2014 spiked to record historic levels in the last few years, over 1,900 parts per billion. In 2019, even the WEF scientists admitted they couldn\u2019t explain the baffling rise, and then in 2020, the world of methane went into the twilight zone. We shut down the modern world due to the pandemic, and methane levels rose even faster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":348699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691818228,691831086,691826963,691831085],"class_list":{"0":"post-348695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-fossil-fuels","10":"tag-man-made","11":"tag-methane-ch4","12":"tag-microbes","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0methane_patrick-pleul-picture-alliance-getty-2048x1482-1.jpg?fit=2048%2C1482&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1sI7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":420023,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=420023","url_meta":{"origin":348695,"position":0},"title":"Hydrogen emissions heat up the climate \u2013 study shows the risks of the energy transition","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/05\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent study published in Nature (December 2025) by an international team led by researchers from Stanford University and Auburn University provides the first comprehensive global hydrogen budget from 1990\u20132020. 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