Sovereign and dependent territory rows of OWID’s “Methane emissions” dataset (top 30 by most recent year). Values in million tonnes CO₂-equivalent (two decimals). Aggregates excluded.
Chart ready. Press play to start.
How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Methane Emissions by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by Our World in Data (mostly re-published World Bank / UN public statistics) (OWID Grapher slug “methane-emissions”). Values are expressed in million tonnes CO₂eq.
What to watch. The names echo the CO2 chart — China, India, the US, Brazil, Russia — but the sources don’t: rice paddies and coal mines, belching cattle, leaking gas pipelines. Watch Brazil hold a top position it never reaches on the CO2 ranking, courtesy of its herds.
Caveats. Methane totals come from sector inventories (agriculture, energy, waste) whose accuracy varies widely — pipeline and landfill leaks are notoriously hard to measure, and satellite studies regularly find more than countries report. Treat small gaps between countries as soft.
Trends in the data
The hidden feature of this dataset is its length: 174 years, back to 1850. At that early point in the industrial revolution the leaders were China (253 million tonnes) and India (201 million tonnes), and the sources were not fossil fuels but paddy fields and livestock. Methane, in other words, was already being emitted in bulk as an agricultural greenhouse gas before the age of coal and oil began. China grew 6.3× from there to 1,591 million tonnes in 2024, but that it was already the world leader at the start tells you how different this gas’s history is from CO₂.
The most extreme growth belongs to Iraq, from 0.91 million tonnes in 1850 to 156 million — 171×. Flaring and leakage of associated gas from oil fields is fossil-fuel methane in its classic form, accumulating alongside twentieth-century petroleum development. France, by contrast, moved from 57 to 63 million tonnes, and Germany is now among the lowest in the table at 56 million tonnes — both close to where they stood 174 years ago. Europe started the industrial revolution at a high level and achieved long-run reductions as coal mines closed and agriculture contracted and became more efficient.
The midpoint of the series holds a surprise as well. The leader in 1937 was the United States at 375 million tonnes, ahead of China (321 million) and India (300 million). In the first half of the twentieth century, coal mining and natural gas development put America ahead of the agricultural giants of Asia on fossil-fuel methane. In the rank changes since, oil producers climbed — Iraq from 28th to 10th and Nigeria from 21st to 8th — while France fell from 5th to 27th and Germany from 6th to 30th. The history of methane emissions is a miniature of energy history: the age of agriculture, then coal, then oil and gas.
The next age may be one of observation. Satellites can now detect methane leaking from pipelines and landfills directly, and comparisons between reported figures and measurements have begun. The accuracy of a statistic that has relied on self-reporting could change substantially. Note also that methane matters because it is short-lived in the atmosphere yet far more potent than CO₂ over the short term: cutting it produces results relatively quickly, which is why more than a hundred countries signed the Global Methane Pledge in 2021 to cut emissions 30% by 2030.
Trivia quiz
What is the chemical formula of methane?
CH₄ — one carbon and four hydrogen atoms; it is the main component of natural gas. (Source)
How do cattle and other ruminants produce methane?
Through enteric fermentation — gut microbes break down feed, releasing methane mainly via belching. (Source)
How does methane compare with CO2 in the atmosphere?
It is shorter-lived (about a decade) but far more potent as a greenhouse gas per unit, so cutting it acts quickly. (Source)