Can methane oxidising bacteria reduce global warming? A modelling study

Global warming is an important environmental problem caused by gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), etc. Specially the emission of methane is difficult to control at source, but its concentration in the atmosphere can be controlled by a bacteria which consume methane for its survival and existence. Methane oxidising bacteria (MOB) decreases the concentration of methane in the atmosphere but increases the concentration of CO2. However, it can still assist in reducing the overall effect of global warming by these two gases since CO2 has less detrimental effect than CH4 on the environment. The role of MOB in controlling global warming and to what extent is very speculative. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a nonlinear model to investigate this. The model analysis showed that with the help of MOB, the rise in mean atmospheric temperature will be 0.22 degrees C less in the next 100 years compared to the rise in mean atmospheric temperature without MOB.