CurFEW

Current and Future Emissions of African Wetland Methane (CurFEW)

Bridging local to continental scales to quantify Earth System feedbacks

Big picture science

The overall aim of CurFEW is to improve predictions of tropical wetland methane emissions and associated feedbacks in a rapidly changing climate. We are going to achieve this by developing and embedding new emission process knowledge, informed by field and laboratory data and by satellite data, into submodels that define the UK Earth System model (UKESM).

This is a NERC funded large grant that starts in October 2025 and runs for five years.

The basic idea

Increasing atmospheric levels of GHGs influences the frequency and severity of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).

While even the basic idea is actually quite complex -- involving atmospheric physics and chemistry, hydrological dynamics, ecology, and microbiology -- we have boiled it down to addressing four science questions:

Question 1

What is the role of catchment-scale river hydrodynamics on seasonal and interannual wetland dynamics and on methane emissions?

Question 2

How strongly does the composition of wetland vegetation control methane emissions?

Question 3

How will a warming climate impact the future composition, distribution, and zonation of wetland vegetation and the associated methane emissions?

Question 4

At the continental scale, what is the range of future wetland methane emissions under different climate scenarios, and how important are changes in water/land management?

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