PowerSwitch

Pretty pictures but they tell an ugly story:

http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/ ... -2013.html

Wikipedia tells me that the methane concentration has increased from 700ppbv in 1750 to ~2000ppbv today.

This 20ppbv uptick seems to be more of the same although another Wiki refers to data showing that methane increase for the decade up to 2010 was near zero.

Perhaps we can be justified in looking to last year's record wet weather for a cause for this renewed growth.

JavaScriptDonkey wrote:last year's record wet weather for a cause for this renewed growth.

Was that an England record or a Northern Hemisphere record?

The record methane levels on relate to the Barents & Norwegian Sea. Even more specifically they are tied to the land (or ice) to sea interface. Rainfall on the USA central plains or the Mediterranean will have little impact.

All pretty minor though compared to the growth since 1750.

JavaScriptDonkey wrote:...data showing that methane increase for the decade up to 2010 was near zero.

that reminds me of those graphs you see about world temperature not having increased since 1998...which it sort-of hasn't, but only because 1998 was itself a massive peak due to El Nino. So I wonder, have the Methane levels done the same?

JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Wikipedia tells me that the methane concentration has increased from 700ppbv in 1750 to ~2000ppbv today.

This 20ppbv uptick seems to be more of the same although another Wiki refers to data showing that methane increase for the decade up to 2010 was near zero.

Data here: http://powerswitch.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22002
Looks like increase since 2007.

The interesting sentence in the WMO report relating to CH4 is:

The distribution of useful observations is too sparse, especially in the tropics, to fully understand the renewed increase in CH4 abundance.