References

ACPD

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

ACPD

1680-7375

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acpd-7-14011-2007

Methane emissions from boreal and tropical forest ecosystems derived from in-situ measurements

Sinha

¹ Williams

¹ Crutzen

P. J.

¹ Lelieveld

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, J.J. Becher Weg 27, 55128 Mainz, Germany

28 09 2007

7 5 14011 14039

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Methane is a climatologically important greenhouse gas, which plays a key role in regulating water vapour in the stratosphere and hydroxyl radicals in the troposphere. Recent findings that vegetation emits methane have stimulated efforts to ascertain the impact of this source on the global budget. In this work, we present the results of high frequency (ca. 1 min−1) methane measurements conducted in the boreal forests of Finland and the tropical forests of Suriname, in April–May, 2005 and October 2005 respectively. The measurements were performed using a gas chromatograph – flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The average of the median mixing ratios during a typical diel cycle were 1.83 μmol mol−1 and 1.74 μmol mol−1 for the boreal forest ecosystem and tropical forest ecosystem respectively, with remarkable similarity in the time series of both the boreal and tropical diel profiles. Night time methane emission flux of the boreal forest ecosystem, calculated from the increase of methane during the night and measured nocturnal boundary layer heights yields a flux of (3.62±0.87)×1011 molecules cm−2 s−1(or 45.5±11 Tg CH4 yr−1 for global boreal forest area). This is a source contribution of circa 8% of the global methane budget. These results highlight the importance of the boreal and tropical forest ecosystems for the global budget of methane. The results are also discussed in the context of recent work reporting high methane mixing ratios over tropical forests using space borne near infra-red spectroscopy measurements.

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