Negligible Warming Caused by Nord Stream Methane Leaks

Abstract

Unanticipated sabotage of two underwater pipelines in the Baltic Sea (Nord Stream 1 and 2) happened on 26 September 2022. Massive quantities of natural gas, primarily methane, were released into the atmosphere, which lasted for about one week. As a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, the potential climatic impact of methane is a global concern. Using multiple methods and datasets, a recent study reported a relatively accurate magnitude of the leaked methane at 0.22 ± 0.03 million tons (Mt), which was lower than the initial estimate in the immediate aftermath of the event. Under an energy conservation framework used in IPCC AR6, we derived a negligible increase in global surface air temperature of 1.8 × 10−5 °C in a 20-year time horizon caused by the methane leaks with an upper limit of 0.25 Mt. Although the resultant warming from this methane leak incident was minor, future carbon release from additional Earth system feedbacks, such as thawing permafrost, and its impact on the methane mitigation pathways of the Paris Agreement, warrants investigation.