Planet-heating methane levels rising at fastest rate in decades

Global emissions of methane, a powerful planet-heating gas, are rising at the fastest rate in decades, requiring immediate action to help avert an escalation of the climate crisis, a study warned yesterday.

- Oliver Milman

Methane emissions are responsible for half of the global heating already experienced, have been climbing significantly since 2006 and will grow throughout the rest of the 2020s unless steps are taken to curb this pollution, concludes the paper authored by more than a dozen scientists from around the world.

The study published in the journal Frontiers in Science says that while the world "quite rightly" has focused on CO2 as the primary driver of rising global temperatures, little has been done to address methane despite its having 80 times the warming power of CO2 in the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.

"The growth rate of methane is accelerating, which is worrisome," said Prof Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University and lead author of the study.