Report written by Peraphan Jittrapirom, Director and research associate of the Global Carbon Project (GCP) Tsukuba International Project Office 

On August 6th, 2020, the Global Carbon Project (GCP, Tsukuba office) organised a one-day online conference to disseminate the results of the recently published Global Methane Budget 2020 in Japan. The public and press conference and scientific forum attracted 219 Japanese and international attendees from diverse sectors, such as industry, media, research institutions and university students.

The event was centered around the Methane Budget 2020, a research conducted by an international team of 91 scientists from 69 research organizations around the world under the umbrella of the GCP. The result, published on July 15th, provides an updated and more comprehensive status of the global methane. It includes all methane sources and sinks and provides insights into the emission dynamics across geographical regions and economic sectors. The research team employs state-of-the-art bottom-up and top-down methods to improve the accuracy of the methane gas accounting in each category, which took three years to complete.

The online conference on August 6th brought together ten scientists from three Japanese organizations (NIES, JAMSTEC and MRI) to elaborate on the results of the Global Methane budget and engage directly with the discussions. The morning Japanese public and press session begins with a presentation on the overview state of climate change research by Seita Emori, deputy Director of Center for Global Environmental Research (CGER-NIES), followed by Yasunori Tohjima (NIES) and Akihiko Ito (NIES) presenting the findings of the methane budget report. They highlighted the alarming trends of anthropogenic methane emission and emphasised the importance of raising awareness among the Japanese public to address the emission. A lively discussion and Q&A session followed, joined by Nobuko Saigusa, Director of CGER-NIES and Fumiko Kasuga, Japan Global Hub Director of Future Earth.

The afternoon scientific forum focused on the technical side of the research and the state of the art techniques that contributed to the emission estimates. Prabir Patra (JAMSTEC) and Shamil Maksyutov (NIES) provided overview findings, and implication of the budgets to provide a setting of the session. The growth pattern of the global methane emission and its driver were examined in the presentation by Yosuke Niwa (NIES), followed by a report on the surface and air atmospheric methane measurements that involved cross-sectoral and international collaborations by Yasunori Tohjima and Toshinobu Machida (NIES). Finally, the modelling of methane emission was addressed by Akihiko Ito and Naveen Chandra (NIES). The sessions discussed the biogeochemical models that account for wetland distribution and the use of inversion modelling in assessing the methane budget. The panel discussion was joined by Nobuko Saigusa and Giles Sioen, Interim Lead Research and Innovation of Future Earth, and Peraphan Jittrapirom, Executive Director of GCP Tsukuba.

[Further Information]

• Press Release

– Japanese

– English

• Event Recording

– Press & Public Event

– Scientific Forum

• Global Methane Budget Website

Publication & Data

• Saunois et al. (2020) The Global Methane Budget 2000-2017. Earth System Science Data. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1561-2020
• Jackson et al. (2020). Increasing anthropogenic methane emissions arise equally from agricultural and fossil fuel sources. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed2