New study closes Amazon methane budget

Floodplain in the Amazon rainforest

Today I read this fascinating study, published two days ago in Nature. In the study, Pangala and others investigated methane emissions from Amazon floodplains - normally focused on soil and water surfaces - and found that trees are the big emitter.

They found that much more methane is released from soil via trees into the atmosphere than previously thought (Pangala et al., 2013; Pangala et al, 2015). This finding fills the gap between satellite (top-down) measurements and measurements in the Amazon (in situ). The contribution of these methane emissions is equal to all the methane emissions from the Arctic, according to the authors. This conclusion makes the Amazon a larger contributor than previously thought, which can affect the estimates of natural variability of methane.