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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-6284</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Shifting Drivers of China&apos;s Methane Emissions amid Economic Growth and Mitigation between 2019&amp;ndash;2024</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Yifan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1899-3941</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pendergrass</surname>
<given-names>Drew</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8210-4983</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jacob</surname>
<given-names>Daniel</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Tang</surname>
<given-names>Yunxiao</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Qiu</surname>
<given-names>Jiaxin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zheng</surname>
<given-names>Bo</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8344-3445</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Ecological Remediation and Carbon Sequestration, Institute of Environment and Ecology,  Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, 518055, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, Beijing, 100084, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>now at: Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>07</day>
<month>04</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>33</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Yifan Li et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2025-6284/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2025-6284/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2025-6284/egusphere-2025-6284.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2025-6284/egusphere-2025-6284.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Amid the accelerated growth in global atmospheric methane (CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;) concentrations after 2019, identifying key emitting regions, quantifying their contributions, and elucidating the underlying drivers have become pressing needs. However, limited monitoring capacity and complex inversion systems have constrained the timely and accurate assessments of regional CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; emissions. Here, we construct a regional atmospheric inversion framework using the Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF), constrained by satellite CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; observations. Applied to East Asia at 0.5&amp;deg; &amp;times; 0.625&amp;deg; resolution, this system produces weekly CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; flux estimates for China during 2019&amp;ndash;2024. We show that China&amp;rsquo;s CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; emissions increased from 61.1 (56.2&amp;ndash;66.7) Tg in 2019 to 66.8 (61.5&amp;ndash;73.0) Tg in 2024. The livestock sector contributed nearly half of the growth, while rising waste and oil-gas emissions and northward expansion of rice cultivation shifted China&amp;rsquo;s emissions growth to previously low-emitting Northwest and Northeast regions. Our framework demonstrates the feasibility of near-real-time, regional-scale emissions monitoring, offering a transferable tool for other high-emitting countries.</p>
</abstract>
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