New data analysis by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston indicate that perhaps man is not responsible for the phenomenon of global warming after all, in spite of the international agitation in this sense over the last period of time. Instead, this could just be part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling occurring at constant rates, claim Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, TEPCO Professors of Atmospheric Chemistry from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science at MIT.

 

They base their findings both on their own recordings, and on data from previous studies of methane level increases and effects. It is a known fact that methane is the second most harmful gas after carbon dioxide, but only because it is much less present in the atmosphere, since otherwise it's 20 to 25 times better at reflecting the Sun-generated heat, and then trapping it in the atmosphere. This is the first high level increase in the last 10 years, and the study in question proves that man is not to blame.

 

If industry was responsible for methane emission, then it would have taken a whole year for the methane pollution from the atmosphere of the heavily industrial northern hemisphere to reach the one from its southern counterpart. The emission was, however, simultaneous in all regions, be them northern or southern, which indicates that this could be the work of nature instead. Naturally, methane is broken down by the free radical hydroxyl (OH) in the atmosphere, a cleansing agent which has been proved to register variations in its presence, and is linked to the latency of methane levels of the last decade.

 

“The next step will be to study [these changes] using a very high-resolution atmospheric circulation model and additional measurements from other networks. The key thing is to better determine the relative roles of increased methane emission versus [an increase] in the rate of removal. Apparently, we have a mix of the two, but we want to know how much of each [is responsible for the overall increase],” shares Prinn. Therefore, in the new light shed by this study, until we really gather more accurate knowledge on the phenomenon of global warming, the “alarming rates” generally iterated only resemble a doom-sayer's mumblings.