Human activity dropped off a cliff during the Covid-19 shutdown. Highways emptied. Flights vanished. Industrial output slowed. If you’d asked almost anyone in early 2020 what that would do to greenhouse gases, they would’ve guessed “down.” Fewer cars, fewer planes, fewer factories—simple equation, right?
Apparently not.
According to a recent Smithsonian summary of a multi-year, 40-scientist study, methane—the second-largest greenhouse gas after water vapor—didn’t drop. It spiked to its highest levels since measurements began. So while humans were baking sourdough and hoarding toilet paper, the atmosphere was busy doing… whatever it wanted.
And the explanation is one of those “the earth is complicated” reminders we all need from time to time.
The Hydroxyl Radical Plot Twist
Methane doesn’t just float around forever. The atmosphere normally destroys it using hydroxyl radicals—tiny, short-lived molecules created when sunlight interacts with various gases, including pollutants from human activity.
So when the world shut down and air pollution dropped, the supply of hydroxyl radicals dropped too. Less pollution meant fewer radicals, which meant methane stuck around longer. The cleaner the air got, the slower methane broke down.
A climate paradox: reduce one pollutant, and another hangs around longer.
Roughly 80% of the methane surge came from this chemistry alone. The other 20%? That came from nature doing its thing.
Wetlands Don’t Read Policy Briefs
While humans were locked inside, La Niña was busy soaking tropical regions across Africa and Southeast Asia. Wetter wetlands mean happier methane-producing microbes, and they responded by belching out more methane—completely independent of anything humans were or weren’t doing.
As one of the study’s authors put it, as the planet gets warmer and wetter, natural methane sources will increasingly shape near-term climate behavior. Translation: even if humans behave perfectly, the earth still has its own plans.
This Isn’t My First Climate Plot Twist
If you’ve read my older posts, you know I’ve been poking at the edges of climate narratives for years—sometimes seriously, sometimes with Nottional-Geographic-level satire. I’ve written about:
- The questionable precision of “global average temperature”
- The natural warming trend since the last ice age
- The correlation between sunspot cycles and temperature
- The political incentives behind climate alarmism
- And, of course, Taco Bell’s methane-related contributions to atmospheric instability (a groundbreaking study conducted by my anonymous imaginary friend)
Some of those live over on my Nottional-Geographic blog:
- New Global Warming Contributors
- Honda Releases Global Warming Vehicle
- A New Perspective on Anthropogenic Global Warming
The point has never been “climate change isn’t real.” The point has always been: the system is complex, the data is messy, and the headlines rarely capture the nuance.
This new methane research fits right into that theme. It’s not a “gotcha.” It’s a reminder that the atmosphere is a dynamic chemical machine with feedback loops we’re still discovering.
So What Do We Do With This?
For me, the takeaway is simple:
- The earth is not a thermostat with a single dial labeled “human activity.”
- Natural processes can amplify or counteract human effects.
- Sometimes reducing one pollutant has unexpected consequences for another.
- And every time we think we’ve got the climate system figured out, it throws us a curveball.
Do your research. Read beyond the headlines. Understand the mechanisms, not just the narratives. And hold your conclusions with the kind of humility appropriate for a planet that routinely surprises the people studying it.
Because if the Covid shutdown taught us anything, it’s this: even when humans sit still, the atmosphere keeps moving.
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