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A bounty of rice comes at a price: soaring methane emissions

The spread of rice paddies in sub-Saharan Africa helps to drive up atmospheric concentrations of a potent greenhouse gas.
A woman harvests rice in a rice paddy near Korhogo on November 18, 2023.

A woman harvests rice in Cote d'Ivoire. Rice cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa has risen sharply over the last 15 years. Credit: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty

The level of of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere is rising, and scientists have attributed much of that rise to emissions from tropical Africa. Cattle and wetlands both host micro-organisms that emit methane — but so do flooded rice paddies, and rice production in sub-Saharan Africa doubled between 2008 and 2018.

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Nature 625, 219 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-04020-3

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 09 January 2024: A previous version of this story gave the wrong year for the reference. This has now been corrected.

References

  1. Chen, Z., Balasus, N., Lin, H. Nesser, H. & Jacob, D. J. Nature Clim. Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01907-x (2024).

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