China's coal mine methane regulations have not curbed growing emissions.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30696820.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-07891-7 and PMC identifier 6351523.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Anthropogenic methane emissions from China are likely greater than in any other country in the world. The largest fraction of China's anthropogenic emissions is attributable to coal mining, but these emissions may be changing; China enacted a suite of regulations for coal mine methane (CMM) drainage and utilization that came into full effect in 2010. Here, we use methane observations from the GOSAT satellite to evaluate recent trends in total anthropogenic and natural emissions from Asia with a particular focus on China. We find that emissions from China rose by 1.1 ± 0.4 Tg CH<sub>4</sub> yr<sup>-1</sup> from 2010 to 2015, culminating in total anthropogenic and natural emissions of 61.5 ± 2.7 Tg CH<sub>4</sub> in 2015. The observed trend is consistent with pre-2010 trends and is largely attributable to coal mining. These results indicate that China's CMM regulations have had no discernible impact on the continued increase in Chinese methane emissions.