Municipalities in rural areas collect garbage from houses and dump it in a low-lying marshy ground. After several years when this ground is completely

Methane and ethane are the most abundant hydrocarbons in the atmosphere and they affect both atmospheric chemistry and climate. Both gases are emitted from fossil fuels and biomass burning, whereas methane (CH4) alone has large sources from wetlands, agriculture, landfills and waste water. Here we use measurements in firn (perennial snowpack) air from Greenland and Antarctica to reconstruct the atmospheric variability of ethane (C2H6) during the twentieth century.

Atmospheric methane (CH4) increased through much of the twentieth century, but this trend gradually weakened until a stable state was temporarily reached around the turn of the millennium, after which levels increased once more. The reasons for the slowdown are incompletely understood, with past work identifying changes in fossil fuel, wetland and agricultural sources and hydroxyl (OH) sinks as important causal factors. Here we show that the late-twentieth-century changes in the CH4 growth rates are best explained by reduced microbial sources in the Northern Hemisphere.

The previously increasing atmospheric methane concentration has inexplicably stalled over the past three decades. This may be due to a fall in fossil-fuel emissions or to farming practices that are curtailing microbial sources.

This article reports the greenhouse gas emissions of anthropogenic origin by sources and removals by sinks of India for 2007 prepared under the aegis of the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA) (note 1). The emission profile includes carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide. 

Earth’s climate is warming as a result of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel combustion. Anthropogenic emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrous oxide and ozone-depleting substances (largely from sources other than fossil fuels), also contribute significantly to warming. Some non-CO2 greenhouse gases have much shorter lifetimes than CO2, so reducing their emissions offers an additional opportunity to lessen future climate change.