Diagnosing Global Changes in Atmospheric Methane Using Ethane and Propane
Abstract
Over the past two decades, atmospheric methane has undergone large-scale and dramatic changes but our understanding of these variations is far from complete. Several hypotheses have been proposed based on analysis of atmospheric measurements of methane and its isotopologues, and explored using global 3-D atmospheric chemistry transport models. Here, we interpret multi-year ground-based measurements of methane in the context of observed variations of ethane and propane. Variations of ethane and propane provide additional information about combustion sources of methane and about variations of the hydroxyl radical that is the dominant loss process for methane. We use a global 3-D atmospheric chemistry transport model to relate changes in regional emissions to observed atmospheric mole fractions at the observation locations, placing our data analysis in a global context.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.A43P3359F
- Keywords:
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- 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1605 Abrupt/rapid climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE