Global warming is expanding Arctic wetlands that naturally pump out more methane, speeding up a vicious “feedback loop” that increases the threat from climate change, according to a University of Colorado climate researcher helping to lead a key study.
More intense precipitation and melting of Arctic permafrost because of higher temperatures have boosted wetland acreage by up to 25% in summer months, according to the study published in “Nature” and co-led by Xin “Lindsay” Lan of Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Biologic material naturally breaking down in swampy areas produces methane, which is a super-accelerant with 30 times greater impact on warming over 100 years than equal amounts of carbon dioxide.
The research team has seen sharp increases in methane from biologic causes like wetlands and garbage breakdown in landfills since 2007.
“Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas that we need to address urgently,” Lan said. “Our emission reduction efforts need to be more aggressive.”
CU Boulder CIRES lab climate researcher Xin (Lindsay) Lan and a team of scientists study increases in methane as wetlands expand from global warming. (CU Boulder)The study can appear as an off-note to environmental news consumers used to hearing calls for wetlands expansions or protections. Wetlands around the world promote clean water and countless layers of wildlife habitat, from large mammals to key microbes.
Arctic wetlands are important habitat as well, Lan said, but rapid, human-caused expansion is not a healthy development for the planet. Moreover, the increase of emissions from wetlands due to warming is happening outside the Arctic as well, including in the tropical band, meaning changes are occurring across enormous swaths of the Earth.
“The whole global wetland area is very large and widespread, and we cannot control it directly,” Lan said.
Researchers now estimate about 60% of global methane production comes from microbial sources such as wetlands, landfills and livestock digestion and waste. Another 30% comes from fossil fuel production and use, such as natural gas leaking from gathering and distribution systems, or leaky wellheads.
Various efforts have been underway for decades to gather methane produced at landfills and prevent it from hitting the atmosphere in raw form by using it for energy generation. In Colorado, that effort will accelerate this summer when the Air Quality Control Commission votes on staff-recommended new rules requiring better methane gathering, garbage cover, flaring and detection and plugging of leaks at municipal solid waste landfills.
The best way to attack methane growth from expanding natural wetlands, Lan said, is for world leaders to make stronger progress on the entire greenhouse gas emissions issue. Only slowing or reversing warming global temperatures can break the vicious feedback loop that is developing from wetlands methane, she said.
Annual global CO2 and methane surveys have broken records in recent years, Lan noted.
“To avoid the worst-case scenario, we need to reduce both methane and CO2 emissions, and we don’t see that happening at this moment,” she said.
Stay tuned for future wetlands monitoring from CIRES, Lan added. Things could be worse, if the growth they have seen so far had been even faster.
“One other piece of good news is that we have not yet seen a very abrupt increase of Arctic methane emission,” Lan said. “Because if there’s an abrupt increase of methane emission, that means we are hitting some very critical dangers of melting permafrost carbon in the Arctic.”
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