While methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, there is over 200 times more CO2 in the atmosphere. Hence the amount of warming methane contributes is 28% of the warming CO2 contributes.
What Is the Most Abundant Gas in Earth's Atmosphere?
Methane is the most abundant reactive trace gas in the atmosphere and arises from both natural and anthropogenic sources. It is a valuable gas and is usable at a wide range of concentrations, down to 5%. In concentrated form it is flammable, representing an explosion risk in confined conditions. The global atmospheric burden of methane (in 1998) was 4850 Mt(CH 4), equivalent to an average.The largest producers by far are the USA and China. The diagram below shows the countries that contribute the biggest percentage of the world's carbon emissions. World Bank, 2008.Carbon dioxide (CO 2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities.In 2018, CO 2 accounted for about 81.3 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the atmosphere as part of the Earth's carbon cycle (the natural circulation of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, and animals).
The Earth's atmosphere is primarily made up of nitrogen, oxygen and argon, but it includes trace gases in smaller amounts such as neon, helium, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. The most abundant gases in the atmosphere are nitrogen at 78 percent and oxygen at 21 percent, while the trace gases methane, neon and helium make up around one-tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere.Air, mixture of gases comprising the Earth’s atmosphere. The mixture contains a group of gases of nearly constant concentrations and a group with concentrations that are variable in both space and time. The atmospheric gases of steady concentration (and their proportions in percentage by volume).
