We present methane (CH 4 ) emissions for East Asia from a Bayesian inversion of CH 4 mole fraction and stable isotope (δ 13 C-CH 4 ) measurements. Emissions were estimated at monthly resolution from 2000 to 2011. A posteriori, the total emission for East Asia increased from 43 ± 4 to 59 ± 4 Tg yr À1 between 2000 and 2011, owing largely to the increase in emissions from China, from 39 ± 4 to 54 ± 4 Tg yr À1 , while emissions in other East Asian countries remained relatively stable. For China, South Korea, and Japan, the total emissions were smaller than the prior estimates (i.e., Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research 4.2 FT2010 for anthropogenic emissions) by an average of 29%, 20%, and 23%, respectively. For Mongolia, Taiwan, and North Korea, the total emission was less than 2 Tg yr À1 and was not significantly different from the prior. The largest reductions in emissions, compared to the prior, occurred in summer in regions important for rice agriculture suggesting that this source is overestimated in the prior. Furthermore, an analysis of the isotope data suggests that the prior underestimates emissions from landfills and ruminant animals for winter 2010 to spring 2011 (no data available for other times). The inversion also found a lower average emission trend for China, 1.2 Tg yr À1 compared to 2.8 Tg yr À1 in the prior. This trend was not constant, however, and increased significantly after 2005, up to 2.0 Tg yr À1 . Overall, the changes in emissions from China explain up to 40% of the increase in global emissions in the 2000s.
Abstract. We have constructed an atmospheric inversion framework based on TM5-4DVAR to jointly assimilate measurements of methane and δ13C of methane in order to estimate source-specific methane emissions. Here we present global emission estimates from this framework for the period 1999–2016. We assimilate a newly constructed, multi-agency database of CH4 and δ13C measurements. We find that traditional CH4-only atmospheric inversions are unlikely to estimate emissions consistent with atmospheric δ13C data, and assimilating δ13C data is necessary to derive emissions consistent with both measurements. Our framework attributes ca. 85 % of the post-2007 growth in atmospheric methane to microbial sources, with about half of that coming from the tropics between 23.5∘ N and 23.5∘ S. This contradicts the attribution of the recent growth in the methane budget of the Global Carbon Project (GCP). We find that the GCP attribution is only consistent with our top-down estimate in the absence of δ13C data. We find that at global and continental scales, δ13C data can separate microbial from fossil methane emissions much better than CH4 data alone, and at smaller scales this ability is limited by the current δ13C measurement coverage. Finally, we find that the largest uncertainty in using δ13C data to separate different methane source types comes from our knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, specifically the distribution of tropospheric chlorine and the isotopic discrimination of the methane sink.
Atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) contributes to global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion, so reducing uncertainty in estimates of emissions from different sources is important for climate policy. Here, we simulate atmospheric N2O using an atmospheric chemistry-transport model (ACTM), and the results are first compared with the in situ measurements. Five combinations of known (a priori) N2O emissions due to natural soil, agricultural land, other human activities and sea-air exchange are used. The N2O lifetime is 127.6±4.0 yr in the control ACTM simulation (range indicate interannual variability). Regional N2O emissions are optimised by Bayesian inverse modelling for 84 partitions of the globe at monthly intervals, using measurements at 42 sites around the world covering 1997-2019. The best estimate global land and ocean emissions are 12.99±0.22 and 2.74±0.27 TgN yr -1 ,
Understanding changes in terrestrial carbon balance is important to improve our knowledge of the regional carbon cycle and climate change. However, evaluating regional changes in the terrestrial carbon balance is challenging due to the lack of surface flux measurements. This study reveals that the terrestrial carbon uptake over the Republic of Korea has been enhanced from 1999 to 2017 by analyzing long-term atmospheric CO 2 concentration measurements at the Anmyeondo Station (36.53°N, 126.32°E) located in the western coast. The influence of terrestrial carbon flux on atmospheric CO 2 concentrations (ΔCO 2 ) is estimated from the difference of CO 2 concentrations that were influenced by the land sector (through easterly winds) and the Yellow Sea sector (through westerly winds). We find a significant trend in ΔCO 2 of −4.75 ppm per decade (p < .05) during the vegetation growing season (May through October), suggesting that the regional terrestrial carbon uptake has increased YUN et al.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.