Phys.org September 27, 2021
Carbon dioxide removal has an increasingly well-established research agenda and technological foundation. There is no framework for methane removal. While some removal technologies are being developed, modelling of their impacts is limited. An international team of researchers (USA – Stanford University, UC Irvine, University of Pennsylvania, Germany, UK, Canada, France) conducted the first simulations using a methane emissions-driven Earth System Model to quantify the climate and air quality co-benefits of methane removal, including different rates and timings of removal. They defined a novel metric, the effective cumulative removal, and used it to show that each effective petagram of methane removed causes a mean global surface temperature reduction of 0.21 ± 0.04°C and a mean global surface ozone reduction of 1.0 ± 0.2 parts per billion. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of methane removal in delaying warming thresholds and reducing peak temperatures and allow for direct comparisons between the impacts of methane and carbon dioxide removal that could guide future research and climate policy…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE 1 , 2Â
Global anthropogenic CH4 emissions (Mt CH4 yr−1) for the recent past and up to 2100 following the SSP emissions scenarios…Credit: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, September 27, 2021Â