Abstract
In summer 2021, the northern high-latitude plains (NHP) of the Eurasian continent endured their most severe drought in nearly two decades, with important implications for regional methane emissions. Using the Global ObservatioN-based system for monitoring Greenhouse GAses for methane (GONGGA-CH4) inversion system along with a merged Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) + TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) dataset, we quantified drought impacts on methane emissions. Independent validation confirmed the system’s high accuracy, revealing a 20% summer emission reduction in NHP during 2021 compared to baseline years. This reduction is primarily attributed to a decrease in liquid water content, which strongly affected wetland emissions. The underlying causes were heightened evaporation and the presence of a blocking high-pressure system within the atmospheric circulation. These findings highlight the profound impact of summer droughts on methane emissions in high-latitude regions, and emphasize the critical importance of integrating diverse data sources to refine methane emission estimates.
Data availability
The prior methane emissions are mainly include wetland emissions, agriculture and waste emissions, fossil fuel emissions, and biomass burning emissions. The wetland prior emissions are from WetCHARTS v1.3.1: https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1915. The agriculture and waste emissions and fossil fuels emissions are from Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) v7.0: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset_ghg70. The biomass burning emissions are from Global Fire Emissions Database version 4.1 (GFEDv4): https://daac.ornl.gov/VEGETATION/guides/fire_emissions_v4_R1.html. The BLEND TROPOMI + GOSAT methane data are publicly available: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/blended-tropomi-gosat-methane/index.html#data/. The ERA5-Land reanalysis data are publicly available: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/. The GPCP data are publicly available: https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/gpcp-monthly-global-precipitation-climatology-project. The GRACE-FO data are publicly available: https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/. The SPEI data are publicly available: https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/standardized-precipitation-evapotranspiration-index-spei. The GONGGA-CH4 data can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31442989.
Code availability
The code used for this study is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18833841.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFF0809103), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42405109, 42305120), the Science and Technology Projects of Xizang Autonomous Region, China (XZ202501ZY0126), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2025T180081), the Innovation Program for Young Scholars of TPESER (TPESER-QNCX2022ZD-01).
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X. Tian and Y. Wang designed the study. M. Zhao performed atmospheric 3D inversions and wrote the original manuscript. X. Tian, Z. Jin, and H. Zhang provided the GONGGA framework. Y. Ge provided climatological analysis. M. Zhao, X. Tian, Y. Wang, T. Wang, J. Ding contributed to writing and commenting on the draft manuscript.
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Communications Earth & Environment thanks Elton Chan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors Keiichiro Hara and Martina Grecequet. A peer review file is available.
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Zhao, M., Tian, X., Wang, Y. et al. Rapid summer methane emission decline in high-latitude plains linked to 2021 drought. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03433-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03433-y
