Methane levels to rise again after slowdown (Guardian)

[Eugene]

Methane levels to rise again after slowdown

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday September 28, 2006
The Guardian

Scientists have uncovered evidence that levels of the greenhouse gas methane
will rise sharply in the next few years, warming the planet faster than
previously expected. The new data from an international team of scientists
has revealed that while methane levels began to level off in the 1990s, emissions
from human activity started to climb again before the end of the last century.

Phillipe Bousquet at the Laboratory of Sciences of Climate and the Environment
in Paris joined scientists from the US, Australia, the Netherlands and South
Africa to examine methane levels in the atmosphere from the early 1980s using
a network of 68 ground-based tracking stations around the world. The upturn
in man-made emissions was masked by a drop in the methane released naturally
from wetlands, by unusually dry weather.

-snip-

They discovered that methane levels fell from nearly 12 parts per billion in the
1980s to four parts per billion in the 1990s. But their calculations show that the
slowing of emissions was only partly to do with strict limits imposed on industry.
Since 1999, levels of methane from human activity have been rising in Asia,
consistent with a surge in coal usage in China.

-snip-

Full article: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1882504,00.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. "faster than previously expected"

Hey ho.
Again.

[hatrack]

2. This IS beginning to become strangely familiar, no?

:eyes: