Surging methane emissions imperil climate goals

Surging methane emissions imperil climate goals PARIS: A decade-long surge of the potent greenhouse gas methane threatens to make the fight against global warming even harder, top researchers warned. "Additional attention is urgently needed to quantify and reduce methane emissions," they wrote Monday in the Environmental Research Letters journal, summarizing the

findings of a consortium of 81 scientists. After rising slowly from 2000 to 2006, the concentration of methane in the air climbed 10 times more quickly the following decade, according to that study, which was published in the peer-reviewed Earth System Science Data.

The unexpected and largely unexplained increase was especially sharp in 2014 and 2015.

"Keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is already a challenging target," they said, referring to the goal set in the 196 nation Paris climate pact, which entered into force last month.

"Such a target will become increasingly difficult if reductions in methane emissions are not also addressed strongly and rapidly."

With only 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) of warming above pre-industrial era levels so far, the world has seen an uptick in extreme weather, including droughts, superstorms, heat waves and coastal flooding boosted by rising seas.

On current trends, average global temperatures are on track to jump by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 F) by 2100, even if national carbon-cutting pledges annexed to the Paris Agreement are honoured.

Without those pledges, the increase would be much higher.