The Great Methane Monster

Huge Methane Spike may be Tied to Fracking

Methane gas flares in North Dakota oil fields – visible from space.

Climate Crocks,

22 February, 2016

Climate Central:

There was a huge global spike in one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change over the last decade, and the U.S. may be the biggest culprit, according a new Harvard University study.

The United States alone could be responsible for between 30 percent and 60 percent of the global growth in human-caused atmospheric methane emissions since 2002 because of a 30 percent spike in methane emissions across the country, the study says.

The research shows that emissions increased the most in the middle of the country, but the authors said there is too little data to identify specific sources. 

However, the increase occurred at the same time as America’s shale oil and gas boom, which has been associated with large amounts of methane leaking from oil and gas wells and pipelines nationwide.

“I’d say the biggest takeaway is that there is more we — the U.S. — could be doing to reduce our methane emissions to combat climate change,” study lead author Alex Turner, a Harvard University chemical engineering Ph.D. candidate, said.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak in California, which was plugged last week after a nearly four-month effort to contain it, has brought new attention to methane. The gas is roughly 86 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a driver of climate change over a period of 20 years, or 35 times as potent over the span of a century. The Aliso leak spewed enough methane into the atmosphere to equal the greenhouse gases emitted by more than 440,000 cars in a year.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is trying to rein in methane emissions from oil and gas operations, and has proposed new rules to curb them from oil and gas wells. The Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan seeks to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by up to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025.

Global methane emissions have risen and fallen several times since the 1980s, Turner said, but they’ve been rising continuously since 2007.

“The causes for this renewed growth are currently unknown,” he said,

In the U.S., the official government tally of the country’s annual human-caused methane emissions between 2002 and 2012 shows that emissions have been about 29 million metric tons annually, without any significant trends up or down. 

Research by Turner’s team, however, showed that emissions ranged from about 39 million tons to about 52 million tons during that period. The team based its findings on satellite data.

The Harvard study, published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, adds to mounting research that shows that the government’s official tally of methane emissions is not consistent with observations made by universities and other institutions.

The official tally, taking what ‘s known as a “bottom-up” approach, calculates methane emissions based on expected leak rates at oil and gas well sites, not actual measurements. The Harvard researchers used a “top-down” method, calculating emissions based on actual satellite measurements, showing that U.S. methane emissions are far greater than those estimated by the government.

High methane levels

Very high methane levels, as high as 3096 parts per billion, were recorded on February 20, 2016. Further analysis indicates that these high levels likely originated from destabilizing methane hydrates in sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).


A staggering (and uprecedented) +7.82C anomaly for the Arctic tomorrow