These “Clumped” Molecules Could Offer Clues About Earth’s Climate

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By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Methane is one of the most abundant greenhouse gases on Earth, and, when compared with carbon dioxide, it is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere. ...New research examined several hundred liters of air gathered from compacted snow in Greenland...published today in Science Advances. As the climate warms, it’s increasingly urgent to understand where methane comes from. Researchers can analyze the ratios of different carbon isotopes within methane to learn whether that sample came from fossil fuels or from other sources, such as wetlands or agriculture. ...Higher anthropogenic emissions result in lower clumped methane concentrations. However, clumped methane molecules take many years to reach equilibrium, so an increase in methane emissions might not show up in the clumped isotope signal for decades. ...NOAA data show that atmospheric methane levels have risen since the 1980s, with a plateau from 1999 to 2006. The new study’s researchers wanted to take a closer look at these changes by examining the clumped isotopes in air samples from the past.... 

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