Ten years of atmospheric methane from ground-based NDACC FTIR observations [Discussion paper]

An increase of 0.31 ± 0.03 % year−1 of atmospheric methane is reported using 10 years of solar observations performed at 10 ground-based stations since 2005. These trend agree with a GEOS-Chem-tagged simulation that accounts for the contribution of each emission source and one sink in the total methane. The GEOS-Chem simulation shows that anthropogenic emissions from coal mining and gas and oil transport and exploration have played a major role in the increase methane since 2005.E. Mahieu is Research Associate with the F.R.S. – FNRS. The F.R.S. 20 – FNRS further supported this work under Grant nº J.0093.15 and the Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles contributed to observational activities support.The Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Wollongong involvement in this work is funded by Australian Research Council projects DP1601021598 and LE0668470