Carbon dioxide and methane are among the best known greenhouse gases. The increase in their emission into the atmosphere is the cause of the current global warming.
the carbon dioxide (CO2) and the methane (CH4) are both greenhouse gases. The first stays in the atmosphere for a hundred years while the second only stays there for a dozen years.
On a century scale, methane is still 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming potential (GWP)!
At equal quantities, methane is therefore more powerful in terms of the greenhouse effect than CO2. But there are not as many methane emissions as there are carbon dioxide emissions.
Which of these two greenhouse gases has the most influence on the climate?
To find out which gas has the most impact on the weather, scientists reason in “equivalent CO2 » ; the effect of each gas is expressed as a function of the effect of the CO2 (which is equal to 1 by definition) with the following calculation: ton of CO equivalent2 of a gas = tonne of gas x GWP of gas.
As the graph above shows, carbon dioxide therefore has a much greater influence on the climate than methane, from the point of view of current emissions.
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