A comparative study of anthropogenic CH<sub>4</sub> emissions over China based on the ensembles of bottom-up inventories

Abstract. Atmospheric methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas that strongly influenced by several human activities. China, as one of the major agricultural and energy production countries, contributes considerably to global anthropogenic CH4 emissions rice cultivation, ruminant feeding, coal production. Understanding characteristics China's necessary for interpreting source contributions further climate change mitigation. However, scarcity data from some sources or years spatially explicit information pose great challenges completing an analysis emissions. This study provides comprehensive comparison synthesizing most current publicly available datasets (13 inventories). The results show differ widely among inventories, with values ranging 44.4–57.5 Tg yr?1 in 2010. discrepancy primarily resulted sector (27.3 %–60.0 % total emissions), followed (26.9 %–50.8 %) waste treatment (8.1 %–21.2 sectors. Temporally, inventories stabilized 1990s but increased significantly thereafter, annual average growth rates (AAGRs) 2.6 %–4.0 during 2000–2010 slower AAGRs 0.5 %–2.2 2011–2015, became relatively stable, 0.3 %–0.8 %, 2015–2019 because stable (mainly production). Spatially, there are large differences hotspot identification incomplete on emission patterns may mislead bias mitigation efforts reductions. availability detailed activity sectors subsectors use region-specific factors play important roles understanding reducing uncertainty bottom-up inventories. Data used this article at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12720989 (Lin et al., 2021).