An Untapped Methane Sink Methane is responsible for about a third of the global warming that has occurred since the industrial revolution. Over 20 years, it has over 80 times the planet-warming power of CO 2 . So it is a big problem that concentrations in the atmosphere have rocketed this century. But because methane is short-lived, staying in the atmosphere for only around 10 years, efforts to remove it can have quick results. They will be critical to meeting global climate targets. Photo by: Vincent Gauci Photo by: Vincent Gauci Professor Vincent Gauci’s team set out to change that by measuring methane exchange in forests stretching from the Amazon to Sweden. After wrapping trunks in a plastic chamber, connected to a methane-measuring machine, they made a surprising discovery: while some trees emitted a small amount of methane from their base, they absorbed the gas higher up their trunks, acting, overall, as a sink. To investigate whether this process was globally important, the scientists developed a new metric to calculate the surface area of the world’s tree bark, from trunk to twig. “It turns out there’s as much surface area of tree bark as there is on the entire global land surface. So it’s a huge area that’s in contact with the atmosphere, but it’s relatively understudied,” Professor Gauci says. The results suggest that the climate benefits of forests could be up to 12% bigger than thought – a discovery which has implications for tackling climate change. “Now we know that trees are a methane sink, that presents an opportunity. We could have a very rapid climate win if we reforest quickly,” says Professor Gauci. Because trees absorb methane through their bark, their surface area influences how much they can draw down, Professor Gauci explains. This means that dense […]
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