Why is "Atmospheric methane removal" trending?

Wikipedia Overview

Atmospheric methane removal is a category of potential approaches being researched to accelerate the breakdown of methane that is in the atmosphere, for mitigating some of the impacts of climate change. Atmospheric methane has increased since pre-industrial times from 0.7 ppm to 1.9 ppm, more than doubling in concentration. The increase in methane from industrialization is linked to natural methane sinks failure in accommodating for the increase in methane due to anthropogenic activities. From 2010 to 2019, methane emissions caused 0.5 °C (about 30%) of observed global warming. Global methane emissions approached a record 600 Tg CH4 per year in 2017. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a lifetime of up to 12 years. With the ability to undergo reactions converting methane to carbon dioxide which has a lifetime in the hundreds of thousands of years, methane is an impactful greenhouse gas. Atmospheric methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide with a global warming potential 34 times higher over and 86 times higher over 20 years. Since methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, removing smaller amounts of atmospheric methane compared to carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would result in a similar climate impact. With background levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide being approximately 420 ppm and background levels of atmospheric methane being approximately 1.92 ppm, lower concentrations of methane result in an increase in difficulty in methane capture compared to carbon dioxide. Alongside the scarcity of methane in the atmosphere, methane's stability and atmospheric conditions in terms of thermodynamics, kinetics, and mass transfer are large contributing factors in the difficulty of removal. The removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has proven to be impactful in terms of greenhouse gas mitigation efforts, with diverse research efforts and a technological foundation.