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Reduction of methane emissions through improved landfill management

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 866–872 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Solid waste in landfills continuously emits methane, which has become the third-largest anthropogenic source of methane emissions globally. The methane emissions from landfills exhibit substantial variability due to factors such as waste management practices and climatic conditions. Here we assessed methane emissions from 102 high-emitting landfills worldwide under different management strategies and climate conditions using 5 years of satellite observations. We find that, for these sites, total methane emissions from open dumps are underestimated by a factor of 5.3 ± 0.3 in the EDGAR v8.0 inventory. Transforming open dumpsites worldwide into sanitary landfills, while diverting organic waste to composters and biodigesters, can decrease methane emissions by 80% (60–89%), offering a mitigation potential of 760 (570–850) Mt CO2e annually. These results highlight that prioritizing improved waste management in developing countries, supported by economic and technological measures, represents one of the most effective strategies for mitigating methane emissions from the solid waste sector.

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Fig. 1: Observations of global landfill emissions (2019–2024).
Fig. 2: Methane plumes observed by PRISMA.
Fig. 3: Methane emission fluxes.
Fig. 4: Emission magnitude and seasonal variation in landfill methane emissions.

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Data availability

The plume images detected in this study are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29247518.v2 (ref. 59). Meteorological reanalysis data, including 10-m wind speed, temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure, can be obtained from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (2017): ERA5, the fifth-generation ECMWF global climate atmospheric reanalysis, available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS) at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu. Information on organic waste addition in landfills across 330 cities globally can be found in the ‘What a Waste Global Database’ at https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0039597. TROPOMI data (S5P L2 CH4 OFFLINE) are available daily via the Copernicus Open Access Hub at https://scihub.copernicus.eu. EDGAR v8.0 data are available at https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset_ghg80. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s GHGRP inventory is available at https://ghgdata.epa.gov. US airborne measurement data are available via the Carbon Mapper website at https://data.carbonmapper.org. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The detailed programming codes used in this study arre available via CodeOcean at https://codeocean.com/capsule/5716215/tree/v4 (ref. 60).

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Acknowledgements

T.C. acknowledges support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2022YFB3904801). We thank the Italian Space Agency for the free PRISMA data used in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Research Center for Remote Sensing Satellite Application, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Haoran Tong, Tianhai Cheng, Xingyu Li, Hao Zhu, Xiaotong Ye, Donghao Fan & Tao Tang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Haoran Tong, Xingyu Li, Hao Zhu, Xiaotong Ye, Donghao Fan & Tao Tang

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  1. Haoran Tong
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Contributions

H.T. performed most of the data analysis, made figures and wrote the first draft with support from T.C. and others. T.C. designed, managed and obtained funding for the project. X.L. and X.Y. helped calculate methane emissions and drafted some of the Methods section. T.C. H.Z., X.Y., D.F. and T.T. assisted in collecting, analysing and illustrating the data. T.C. drafted the introduction and performed some of the literature review. All authors edited the paper and approved its submission.

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Correspondence to Tianhai Cheng.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Rona Thompson, Ke Yin and the other, anonymous, reviewer for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Typical Landfill True Color Satellite Images.

a, Algeria, b, Mexico, c, Iran, d, Brazil, e, United States, f, China. a–c are open dumpsites, while d–f are sanitary landfills. Credit: background satellite images, Google Earth Imagery © 2024 Maxar Technologies.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Distribution of methane emissions from the U.S. solid waste sector.

Quantified by the Next-Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG) and the Global Airborne Observatory (GAO) airborne campaigns between September 2016 and June 2024(10 kg h−1 detection limit). To derive emission rates per overpass from airborne data, individual plumes detected within the same landfill were spatially clustered to represent a single emission event. Data were provided by Carbon Mapper. Figure adapted with permission from ref. 13, AAAS.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Relationship Between Average Methane Emission Flux and Food Organic Content in Landfills.

Box plots show the median (solid line), the 25th and 75th percentiles (box edges), and whiskers extend to the most extreme data points within 1.5× the interquartile range.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Comparison of Total Annual Methane Emissions from Landfills Detected by PRISMA with the EDGAR v8.0 Global Inventory (Classified by Country).

Blue bars represent sanitary landfills, while orange bars represent open landfills. The shaded area indicates the total annual average methane emissions recorded by EDGAR v8.0 from 2019 to 2022 for these landfills. The numbers inside the bars represent the count of each landfill type in the statistics, and the numbers above the bars indicate the total number of both landfill types. Black error bars represent ±1 SD around the mean emission estimate, calculated across all landfills within each country.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 5 Example Methane Emission Rates from US Landfills.

The first three bars on the left represent estimates from different inventories—BAAQMD (blue), EDGAR (orange), and US EPA (green). The bar on the right represents PRISMA measurements (red). The numbers within the red bars indicate the number of effective measurements for each landfill. Black error bars represent ±1 SD around the mean (or estimated measurement uncertainty for single-retrieval cases). EDGAR data from ref. 34, BAAQMD data from ref. 36 and GHGRP data from ref. 37.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–6.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Information on 102 landfills.

Source Data Fig. 2

Methane plume data in TIFF format. The files contain spatial distributions of methane enhancements retrieved from hyperspectral remote sensing observations.

Source Data Fig. 3

Information on plumes.

Source Data Fig. 4

Methane emissions from surveyed landfills in developing and developed countries.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Plume.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3

Food organic waste percentage (%) and methane emission flux for each landfill site.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4

Annual methane emissions from landfills monitored by PRISMA across various countries.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 5

Comparison of methane emissions from four US landfills: PRISMA observations versus inventory reports.

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Tong, H., Cheng, T., Li, X. et al. Reduction of methane emissions through improved landfill management. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 866–872 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02391-1

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