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The most effective way to combat global warming is to reduce methane and nitrogen oxide emissions
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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American climatologists have calculated that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will take too long to solve the problem of global warming. Reducing emissions of secondary gases - methane and nitrogen oxide - will cool the Earth much faster.
A team of scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) led by Dr. Stephen Montzka has concluded that the most effective way to combat global warming is to reduce emissions of not the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, but other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrogen oxide. Methane and nitrogen oxide do not accumulate
These, as always considered minor culprits of warming, as scientists explain, have one important advantage. Carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere - it can remain there for several millennia. Therefore, whether you reduce it or not, there will be no quick effect. And methane and nitrogen oxide do not live long in the atmosphere. Therefore, Montska believes that global warming can be dealt with much faster by reducing the amount of short-lived greenhouse gases.
"We know that climate warming is largely due to carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels. And we understand very well that this problem cannot be solved quickly. After all, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a long time. But, in our opinion, there is an alternative way to solve this problem. Reducing other greenhouse gases - short-lived ones - can lead to a faster effect," says Montska.
Thus, according to climatologists, in order to stop global warming, it is necessary to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80%. The figure is almost unrealistic. In addition, a significant amount of time must pass, at least hundreds of years, for a noticeable effect to occur. Reducing methane and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80% should stop global warming in just a few decades. And if we simultaneously reduce carbon dioxide and short-lived gas emissions, the expected effect will occur even earlier, and the climate will stop warming by the end of this century.
However, scientists also point out that there are still many questions about the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate. Since it is complicated by many interrelations with different processes, and natural sources are connected to anthropogenic ones. For example, due to the increase in air temperature, the permafrost layer in the Arctic begins to melt. This leads to even more methane ending up in the atmosphere. Another example is aerosols coming from natural and anthropogenic sources, which enter the upper layers of the atmosphere and, conversely, cool the earth.
Dr. Montsky and his colleagues' article on an alternative solution to global warming is published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.