Reading notes-8

For more than 20 years the global emissions and the lifetime of methane have probably been constant, so the buildup of methane in the atmosphere has been slowing down for as long. During this time, there have been periodic events occurring every seven to eight years, when global methane concentrations increased by some 10 ppb and later fell back, in some cases due to temporary increases of emissions from the northern tropics that spread to the global scale. These conclusions are derived from the accumulated global observations that now span 23 years and define the role of human activities in the recent cycle of atmospheric methane.

Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled over the last century, raising concerns that it is contributing to global warming and will continue to do so in the future. Although these past increases were alarmingly rapid, sbusequent measurements showed a persistent slowdown in the trends to nearly zero at present . Here we discuss the nature and consequences of these observations and present the long composite atmospheric time series for further research. We wil use a unique deconstruction of the time series that provides estimates for the annual emissions and lifetime of methane and isolates the effect of the trends and interannual variations of the sources and sinks.

We have seen that by combining data from two networks, we can construct a long time series that contains new information about the temporal changes of methane sources and sinks. The OGI network was among the first of its kind and was set up to systematically document the impact of human activities on the global atmosphere. By using high quality flasks, dozens of trace constituents could be measured and were. The network stopped in late 1998, but continues to provide early data for greenhouse gases and ozonedepleting compounds. At some sites there are data going back to 1979, but global measurements are not available until 1981. There are data from yet other networks that may be used to refine the time series or validate the results discussed here but none can extend it backward further in time.

The present data set spans more than two decades. It shows that both methane emissions and its lifetime may have been constant over this period. To quantitatively explain the decreasing trends of methane it is not necessary to look for decreasing sources or increasing OH. During the time of the measurements if either has changed the other must also have changed by a proportionate amount to account for the observed trends. Moreover, while such circumstances may have occurred, if the sources have increased in the past they would have no environmental consequences such as increased global warming, because the extra amounts put into the atmosphere would be the same amounts that would have to be taken out by the increased OH to be consistent with the observed concentrations of methane during the last two decades. The concentrations behave exactly as if the sources and sinks had been constant.

A confirming aspect of this apparent constancy of sources and sinks is that the trend has been decreasing for the last two decades until the present when it has reached near zero, thus attracting renewed attention. The major agricultural sources such as rice agriculture and cattle have little or no potential for large increases in the future and have already shown reduction in emissions from some regions. Seeing that the total source has remained constant for at least the last two decades, it is questionable whether human activities can cause methane concentrations to increase greatly in the future. This prediction is within the lower range of the IPCC SRES scenarios.

During the span of these experiments there have been three periods when the concentrations have risen and fallen creating an apparent cycle of about 7.7 years. Since it is not known with certainty what may have caused these peaks, it is not clear whether it is a cycle or just coincidence of disparate causes that give an appearance of periodicity. In general long-term cycles of atmospheric trace gases are not known partly because precise data have not been taken for long enough times, but for methane we see that such cycles or events exist and influence the observed concentrations and trends much more than any systematic increase or decreases of sources and sinks over the last two decades.

引自“Atmospheric methane: trends and cycles of sources and sinks ”