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Exploring Methane
11/05/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
As a contributor to global climate change, methane is second only to carbon dioxide but it
doesn't get a lot of press. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and on today's segment on global climate
change, Special Producer Margaret Landsman explores methane.
Methane doesn't grab the same headlines as CO2, maybe in part because there's much more CO2 in
the atmosphere than methane. Those concentrations, however, don't tell the whole story about
this trace gas according to atmospheric scientist Patrick Crill, director of the Institute of
Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire.
PC: When you start looking at the fact that methane is a much more efficient gas in terms of
its ability to warm up -- it's a more efficient greenhouse gas -- then you start to see that
the methane dynamics become much more important.
Methane is considered 20 times more efficient than carbon dioxide in trapping heat, and like
its better known cousin, began building up in the atmosphere at the dawn of the industrial
age.
PC: Prior to that we were looking at methane concentrations in the atmosphere on the order of
700 or less parts per billion. Now, we're at 1750. The atmosphere is in a place that we
haven't seen in human history.
Though methane has natural sources like wetlands, termites and oceans, it's human activities
that are responsible for nearly three-quarters of the gas in the atmosphere. These include
mining, fossil fuels, rice paddies, bio-mass burning, landfills, manure and cows. Crill says
that there are encouraging signs that with better management of those human-related sources,
methane concentrations can be reduced.
In Concord, New Hampshire, I'm Margaret Landsman.
Our series on Global Climate Change is supported by the New England Science Center
Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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