A gridded (0.1°  ×  0.1°) methane emission dataset for India for 2023 to redefine global climate studies

Abstract. Methane (CH4) is a predominant climate-forcing agent and has become a focal point of global climate discussions, owing to its significant contribution to atmospheric warming. The ambiguity surrounding the relative contributions of various natural and anthropogenic sources, coupled with associated uncertainties, poses significant challenges to assessing methane emissions in developing nations like India. To address these challenges and better understand the methane-emitting sources, this study presents a comprehensive high-resolution gridded (0.1° × 0.1°) inventory of CH4 emission by including 25 distinct anthropogenic and natural sources in India for 2023 by adopting the IPCC bottom-up approach. The estimated CH4 over India is 37.79 Tg yr−1, which will redefine the contribution of various sources. The agriculture sector contributed ∼50 % followed by wetlands (22.8 %), fossil fuel (8.9 %) and waste management (8.4 %). This study reports the first-ever comprehensive emissions from natural sources like wetlands and termites. The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and coastal states show elevated emissions with Uttar Pradesh contributing the highest (10.8 %) followed by Gujarat (9.4 %), and Maharashtra (8.6 %). However, surprisingly cities exhibit lower CH4 as compared to other semi-urban/rural regions. This developed dataset can be a valuable input to optimize the climate study by filling the data gap, enabling policymakers to formulate various mitigation measures. The emission dataset can be accessed through the Zenodo repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14089138 (Sahu, 2024).