Atmospheric methane is rising faster than any other greenhouse gas, with 2020–2023 seeing record increases. While anthropogenic emissions drive long-term growth, isotopic evidence suggests rising natural emissions, such as thawing permafrost and expanding wetlands, may now be a key contributor. These sources remain poorly monitored, creating uncertainty in climate predictions. This workshop would provide a critical first step in exploring what such a system might look like, and, in any case, would build a case for expanded research, measurement, and monitoring of natural methane emissions.
This workshop will address the growing risks arising from an acceleration of methane emissions from wetlands, inland water bodies, and thawing permafrost, which are anticipated to increase in the coming decades. Participants will evaluate the gaps in our capacity to monitor, model, and anticipate these emission increases, determine whether and how an early warning system or other measuring framework could help identify these emission increases, and consider what mitigation efforts could possibly result from the proposed framework.
In addition to expanding and strengthening collaboration across disciplines and geographies and bringing attention to a critically under-resourced area of the climate system, participants will be invited to contribute towards the following priority outputs:
Natural methane sources are poorly monitored, contributing to reduced accuracy of climate predictions and high uncertainty in the global methane budget. These uncertainties also hinder our ability to understand and mitigate anthropogenic emissions. The omission of rising natural methane sources from our climate models could result in increased warming beyond current predictions and inadequate emissions reduction necessary to stay within climate guardrails. Our current methane monitoring system is a patchwork of aerial observations and ground-based sensors mostly focused in the Northern Hemisphere. Detection of point-source methane emissions has improved dramatically in the past years, however ~40% of methane emissions come from natural sources which lack adequate monitoring and detection. A conversation is needed about what is the best way to improve monitoring of these emissions and whether society could benefit from the establishment of an early warning system or another alternative framework.
Strategies like the Global Methane Pledge aim to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. However, projected increases in natural methane emissions, which remain poorly monitored and characterized, potentially render anthropogenic emission reduction strategies inadequate in curbing atmospheric concentrations by 2030. Interdisciplinary coordination and conversation is urgently needed to review the available fundamental science of rising natural methane emissions, consider monitoring and alert efforts, and assess potential frameworks, strategies, and thresholds for implementation. This workshop could be a transformational step towards developing a robust global monitoring framework of natural emissions which could improve fundamental scientific inquiry and inform emissions reductions strategies.
This workshop will increase collaboration across geographies and scientific expertise to evaluate the gaps in our current capacity to monitor, model, and anticipate these emission increases. Participants will further explore whether the current risk of rising natural methane emissions would be best addressed by an early warning system. This exploration could consider frameworks from analogue systems across other natural hazards (e.g., aridification trends, frequencies of cyclones and storm surges), health-related disasters (e.g., global pandemics), or existing methane monitoring systems focused on anthropogenic emissions. Finally, the workshop will consider what type of response capability an early warning system for natural emissions could enable, which of those responses currently exist and which should be included in a future research agenda.
This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science on March 26th, 2026; doi:10.1126/science.aef0459. The final published version can be found here.
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