A 130-year global inventory of methane emissions from livestock: Trends, patterns, and drivers

Lei Zhang; Hanqin Tian; Hao Shi; Shufen Pan; Jinfeng Chang; Shree R S Dangal; Xiaoyu Qin; Siyuan Wang; Francesco N Tubiello; Josep G Canadell; Robert B Jackson

doi:10.1111/gcb.16280

A 130-year global inventory of methane emissions from livestock: Trends, patterns, and drivers

Glob Chang Biol. 2022 Sep;28(17):5142-5158. doi: 10.1111/gcb.16280. Epub 2022 Jun 20.

Authors

Lei Zhang^{1

2

3}, Hanqin Tian^{2

4}, Hao Shi^{1

2}, Shufen Pan², Jinfeng Chang⁵, Shree R S Dangal⁶, Xiaoyu Qin^{1

3}, Siyuan Wang^{1

3}, Francesco N Tubiello⁷, Josep G Canadell⁸, Robert B Jackson⁹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
² International Center for Climate and Global Change Research, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁴ Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA.
⁵ College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁶ School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.
⁷ Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, Italy.
⁸ Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
⁹ Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

PMID: 35642457
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16280

Abstract

Livestock contributes approximately one-third of global anthropogenic methane (CH₄ ) emissions. Quantifying the spatial and temporal variations of these emissions is crucial for climate change mitigation. Although country-level information is reported regularly through national inventories and global databases, spatially explicit quantification of century-long dynamics of CH₄ emissions from livestock has been poorly investigated. Using the Tier 2 method adopted from the 2019 Refinement to 2006 IPCC guidelines, we estimated CH₄ emissions from global livestock at a spatial resolution of 0.083° (~9 km at the equator) during the period 1890-2019. We find that global CH₄ emissions from livestock increased from 31.8 [26.5-37.1] (mean [minimum-maximum of 95% confidence interval) Tg CH₄ yr^-1 in 1890 to 131.7 [109.6-153.7] Tg CH₄ yr^-1 in 2019, a fourfold increase in the past 130 years. The growth in global CH₄ emissions mostly occurred after 1950 and was mainly attributed to the cattle sector. Our estimate shows faster growth in livestock CH₄ emissions as compared to the previous Tier 1 estimates and is ~20% higher than the estimate from FAOSTAT for the year 2019. Regionally, South Asia, Brazil, North Africa, China, the United States, Western Europe, and Equatorial Africa shared the majority of the global emissions in the 2010s. South Asia, tropical Africa, and Brazil have dominated the growth in global CH₄ emissions from livestock in the recent three decades. Changes in livestock CH₄ emissions were primarily associated with changes in population and national income and were also affected by the policy, diet shifts, livestock productivity improvement, and international trade. The new geospatial information on the magnitude and trends of livestock CH₄ emissions identifies emission hotspots and spatial-temporal patterns, which will help to guide meaningful CH₄ mitigation practices in the livestock sector at both local and global scales.

Keywords: CH4 emissions; IPCC 2019 refinement; Tier 2; livestock; long-term variations.

MeSH terms

Animals
Cattle
Climate Change
Commerce
Internationality
Livestock*
Methane*

Substances

Methane