Greenhouse Gas Methane Cools Our Planet Even As It Heats: Study

Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called log way energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter.

The Global Research

 The study of Greenhouse gas (Methane) was published in the Journal Nature Geosciences.  It is found that in addition to absorbing long-wave energy. Methane also absorbs incoming energy from the Sun, known as shortwave energy.

“This should warm the planet. But counterintuitively, the shortwave absorption encourages changes in clouds that have a slight cooling effect,” said Robert Allen. He is an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside(UCR) in the US, who led the study.

Researchers noted that methane remains a potent contributor to global warming, and efforts to reduce methane emissions are vital for keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial values.

Though methane generally increases the amount of precipitation, accounting for the absorption of shortwave energy suppresses that increase by 60 percent, the researchers mentioned.

There are two types of energies longwave(from Earth) and (from the Sun). These energies escape from the atmosphere more than they are absorbed into it.

The atmosphere needs compensation for escaped energy, which it gets from the heat created by water vapors.

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Researchers conclude

The researchers conclude that methane changes the equations by holding on to energies. Methane introduces heat.

Methane shortwave absorption decreases the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface.

“This has implications for understanding in more detail how methane and perhaps other greenhouses gases can impact the climate system,” Allen said.

Going forward, the researchers would like to conduct additional experiments to learn how different concentrations of methane would impact the climate. 

The researchers noted that methane emissions are also likely to increase as frozen ground underlying the Arctic begins.