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LONDON, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- The surge of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which mostly results from livestock production and agriculture, threatens to make the fight against global warming even harder, the Telegraph reported on Monday.
Efforts made to prevent the planet from heating has largely focused on the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide which accounts for 70 percent of global warming, but another major player, methane, which accounts for 20 percent of global warming, needs more attention.
"Additional attention is urgently needed to quantify and reduce methane emissions," according to a study by the world's top-level researchers published in the Environmental Research Letters journal, summarizing the findings of a consortium of 81 scientists.
After rising slowly from 2000 to 2006, the concentration of methane in the air climbed 10 times more quickly than the following decade, according to the report.
"Methane has many sources, but the culprit behind the steep rise is probably agriculture," Robert Jackson, a professor from U.S. Stanford University, told BBC News.
A more likely culprit is livestock production and agriculture, which together account for nearly two-thirds of manmade methane emissions, according to the study.
Cows expel large quantities of methane and the flooded soils of rice paddies are homes for microbes that produce the gas, the researchers said.
Methane is much more short-lived in the atmosphere than CO2, which means that actions taken to reduce emissions will show rapid results, the researchers added.
"Methane is more difficult to study than CO2 because it's more diffuse, but I think we are poised to make really good progress over the next few years," Jackson added.
