Archive by category | Biosphere feedbacks

The plant-methane link again

This week in Nature we have a news story on an attempt to follow up Frank Keppler’s work on methane produced aerobically by green plants which we published early last year (news story | paper). The Keppler piece, which suggested that methane emissions from green plants were a significant but previously unappreciated factor in global methane emissions, caused quit a lot of fuss, understandably, in the media — since methane is a greenhouse gas which, over short time horizons, is about 75 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — and quite a lot of befuddlement among plant scientists. If it were true, it would have significant implications for the way that people model methane production, and the levels of production that one might predict in a warming world. The debate rumbled on last year (another news report, this time by my colleague Quirin).  Read more