Methane

• While carbon dioxide is a major threat to climate change and the increase in heat in the earth’s atmosphere, a stronger greenhouse gas is methane.¹
   

• Fortunately, methane does not linger in the air as long as carbon dioxide, but it causes more damage while it is in the atmosphere because, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), it is 84 times more potent than carbon.¹
   

• This effect occurs over a twenty-year period, meaning it is 84 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide for the first twenty years it is in the atmosphere.¹
   

• Overall, methane contributes about 25-28% to global warming than carbon dioxide does, due to carbon’s much greater abundance.¹
   

• Methane is created from burning natural gases. A good example from the EDF of a way methane might contribute to climate change is that of a leaky pipe that lets methane escape. The gas rises, absorbs the sun’s heat, and then is trapped in the atmosphere, warming it.¹
   

• The largest contributor of methane to the atmosphere is the oil and gas industry.¹
   

 

• According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, other sources are from swamps and rivers, volcanoes, wildfires, and even from the stomachs of cows and termites.²
   

• It is also abundant from landfills, sewage treatments, and rice paddies.²
   

• NASA’s satellite images have shown methane emitting from craters in Siberia to hot spots over the Four Corners region of the United States, and to Alaskan lakes;
   

• where scientists have been able to light the lakes on fire because of the high concentrations of methane in them.²
  
  
  
   

Methane: The other important greenhouse gas (2016) Available at: https://www.edf.org/methane-other-important-greenhouse-gas (Accessed: 6 December 2016).¹

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Voiland, A. (2016) Methane matters: Feature articles. Available at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MethaneMatters/ (Accessed: 6 December 2016).²