Conference: Methane Alert: What measurement framework is needed to monitor increasing natural methane emissions?

About This Grant

This award will fund a workshop in October, 2025 at the Aspen Global Change Institute to review the available fundamental science of increasing natural methane emissions and assess potential frameworks, strategies, and thresholds for further monitoring and mitigation. This workshop will convene approximately thirty participants for a weeklong program of technical presentations, discussions, working groups, and opportunities for public engagement. Workshop participants will represent a range of disciplines, issue areas, geographies, and types of expertise including climate modeling, methane detection and monitoring (ground-based, aerial, and satellite observations), biogeochemical observations, ecology, and risk management. Key goals of the workshop are to: i) synthesize available evidence of increasing natural methane emissions; ii) evaluate potential risks and consequences of unmonitored natural methane emissions; and iii) consider research needs and collaboration opportunities for developing and deploying a framework to study positive feedbacks. The workshop will increase collaboration across research disciplines and geographies that have not had other venues to connect on this issue, to evaluate current gaps in the capacity to monitor, model, and anticipate these emission increases. Participants also will will engage the public through a lecture, as well as web-accessible videos of workshop proceedings. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.