Satellite-Based Monitoring of Methane Emissions from China’s Rice Hub

Abstract

Rice cultivation is one of the major anthropogenic methane sources in China and globally. However, accurately quantifying regional rice methane emissions is often challenging due to highly heterogeneous emission fluxes and limited measurement data. This study attempts to address this issue by quantifying regional methane emissions from rice cultivation with a high-resolution inversion of satellite methane observations from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI). We apply the method to the largest rice-producing province (Heilongjiang) in China for 2021. Our satellite-based estimation finds a rice methane emission of 0.85 (0.69–1.03) Tg a^–1 from the province or an average emission factor of 22.0 (17.8–26.6) g m^–2 a^–1 when normalized by rice paddy areas. The satellite-based analysis reveals a 2 to 4 times lower bias in widely used global and national inventories, which lack up-to-date regional information. The inversion reduces the uncertainty of regional rice emissions by 73% relative to bottom-up estimates based on field flux measurements. The satellite inversion also shows that the highest rice methane emissions occur in June during the tillering stage of rice, decreasing toward ripening, indicating that the predominant water management practice in the region involves drainage and intermittent flooding after initial flooding. Process-based modeling further suggests that this practice can lead to a reduction of methane emissions by more than 50% compared to continuous flooding of rice paddies and natural wetlands.