Emerging Trends, Sectoral, and Regional Patterns in China’s Methane Emissions: A Satellite-Constrained Perspective

As the world’s largest methane (CH4) emitter, China plays a critical role in global climate mitigation. This study develops a combined Lagrangian-Eulerian inversion framework integrating the blended satellite products from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) to quantify spatiotemporal dynamics in China’s CH4 emissions from 2019 to 2023. We estimate an annual average total emissions of 55.4 ± 3.6 Tg yr–1, slightly increasing from 54.7 ± 3.0 Tg yr–1 in 2019 to 60.4 ± 3.9 Tg yr–1 in 2023. Anthropogenic sources contributed an average of 88% of total CH4 emissions, mainly from coal mining (36%), livestock (25%), rice cultivation (14%), and the oil and gas (12%) sector. Notably, our top-down estimates suggest the oil and gas sector emitted about 5.6 Tg yr–1 during 2019–2023, 4.3–6.1 times higher than the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR_2024) estimates and 2.2–2.9 times above the national inventory. Furthermore, the sector’s share (12%) now triples the 2010–2017 levels (4–5%). Spatially, our inversion suggests that EDGAR_2024 underestimates the contributions from Southwest China (7–8% in EDGAR_v2024 vs 13–19% in our estimates) while overestimating contributions from North China (34–35% vs 18–25%). Furthermore, China exhibited the highest agreement between two methods (5–25% difference) during 2000–2023, compared to the USA (16–39%), Russia (52–70%), India (9–25%), Indonesia (42–79%), Brazil (60–68%), and European Union (24–38%). This study provides the latest satellite-based emission estimates for China’s CH4 emissions and shows implications for refining inventory methodologies and policy-making.