NASA Confirms Methane Spike Is Tied to Oil and Gas
According to a recent study by NASA, the oil and gas industry is largely responsible for the global rise in emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
These emissions of methane (CH4), have increased by about 25 teragrams per year since 2006. A teragram is a unit of mass equal to one trillion grams.
The findings underscore the need for the world to rapidly transition to renewable sources of energy, notably wind and solar power, in order to achieve the central goal of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which is to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
A team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory led by John Worden concludes that the exploitation and transport of fossil fuels – so oil, coal, and natural gas - has largely contributed to the release of fossil methane present in the world’s subsoil.
photo credit: Kurayba