NASA’s new three-dimensional portrait of methane, the world’s second-largest contributor to greenhouse warming, shows it arising from a diversity of sources on the ground and how it moves through the atmosphere. Combining multiple data sets from emissions inventories, including fossil fuel, agricultural, biomass burning and biofuels, and simulations of wetland sources into a high-resolution computer model, researchers now have an additional tool for understanding this complex gas and its role in Earth’s carbon cycle, atmospheric composition, and climate system.
Image Credit: NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio