Francesca Hopkins

When human activity dropped during COVID-19, methane levels surprisingly spiked. Now, a study points to two reasons why.

tomwt — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:05:20 +0000

When human activity dropped during COVID-19, methane levels surprisingly spiked. Now, a study points to two reasons why. tomwt Wed, 02/18/2026 - 08:05 More CNAS in the Media Mary Randolph | Smithsonian Magazine February 10, 2026

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - As the world shuttered in 2020 amid Covid-19 lockdowns, scientists expected to see one silver lining to the pandemic: a decrease in air pollution. With fewer cars on the roads and a drop in industrial activity, researchers did notice a dip in daily carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. But methane, the second-largest contributor to climate change, surprisingly surged to its highest levels in the atmosphere since researchers began measuring it in the 1980s.

Six years later, a team of more than 40 scientists has offered an answer to this chemical mystery in a study published last week in Science, pointing to dynamics in the atmosphere and natural areas.

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“This paper really highlights the success of all these multitiered methods that we’ve developed as a community,” says Francesca Hopkins, a climate change scientist at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the work, to Fionna Samuels at Chemical and Engineering News. She adds that “the whole globe relies on these datasets.”

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Francesca Hopkins

Dairy Farm Captures and Cleans Over 80 Percent of Methane Emissions

tomwt — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 17:30:27 +0000

Dairy Farm Captures and Cleans Over 80 Percent of Methane Emissions tomwt Wed, 06/18/2025 - 10:30 More CNAS in the Media Rosie McCall | Discover Magazine June 16, 2025

DISCOVER MAGAZINE - Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping more than 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Indeed, it is thought that between 20 and 30 percent of global warming since 1750 can be pinned on methane emissions alone, and agriculture is one of the biggest culprits.

But it is possible to capture and cleanse methane before turning it into a product that can be reused, as one family farm in California has shown. The implementation of dairy digesters could reduce methane emissions by approximately 80 percent, say climate researchers writing in Global Change Biology Bioenergy.

“When the system is built well and managed carefully, the emissions really drop. That’s what we saw here,” lead author Francesca Hopkins, a climate scientist at the University of California, Riverside, said in a press release.

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California dairy digesters slash methane emissions by 80% in major agriculture trial

tomwt — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 17:24:34 +0000

California dairy digesters slash methane emissions by 80% in major agriculture trial tomwt Wed, 06/18/2025 - 10:24 More CNAS in the Media Aamir Khollam | Interesting Engineering June 11, 2025

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is over 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide when trapping heat over a 20-year period. It accelerates global warming much faster than CO2. In California, dairy farms are among the largest sources of methane, especially through how they handle manure.

A new study from the University of California, Riverside, confirms that dairy digesters, which are sealed manure ponds that capture methane, can reduce those emissions by about 80 percent.

Real-world test confirms promising tech
Researchers monitored a family-run dairy in Tulare County, the top milk-producing county in the country. They used a van equipped with high-precision gas sensors to collect methane readings before and after the farm installed a digester in 2021.

The team gathered hundreds of data points across two years. These mobile atmospheric measurements offered the clearest look yet at how digesters perform under real operating conditions.

Initially, the system had some leaks. The research team worked with California Bioenergy, the system operator, to fix the issues. After changes were made, emissions dropped sharply.

“This was a textbook case of adaptive management,” said Francesca Hopkins, the UCR climate change scientist who led the study. “The partnership between scientists, the company, and the farmer really made a huge difference.”

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Covering poop lagoons with a tarp could cut 80% of methane emissions from dairy farms

tomwt — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 17:16:21 +0000

Covering poop lagoons with a tarp could cut 80% of methane emissions from dairy farms tomwt Wed, 06/18/2025 - 10:16 More CNAS in the Media Sascha Pare | Live Science June 18, 2025

LIVE SCIENCE - Dairy farms produce huge amounts of potent greenhouse gases. But now, scientists say these farms can slash their methane emissions by covering cow-poop ponds with a giant tarp.

Scientists recorded an 80% reduction in the methane emissions of a dairy farm in California after its owners installed a "digester" — a system that traps gases over manure ponds and converts them into fuel, according to a new study.

"When the system is built well and managed carefully, the emissions can really drop. That's what we saw here," study co-author Francesca Hopkins, an assistant professor of climate change and sustainability at the University of California, Riverside, said in a statement.

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Dairy farms can join the climate fight by trapping methane

tomwt — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 23:00:02 +0000

Dairy farms can join the climate fight by trapping methane tomwt Thu, 06/12/2025 - 16:00 More CNAS in the Media Andrei Ionescu | Earth.com June 12, 2025

EARTH.COM - A year-long experiment on a Central Valley dairy farm has confirmed that sealing manure lagoons under gas-tight tarps can trap roughly 80 percent of the methane they would otherwise release.

By capturing the gas and sending it to fuel markets, the system turns a potent climate threat into a usable resource.

Led by researchers from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), the study gives the first independent, year-over-year check on dairy “digesters” that California regulators have counted on to meet aggressive methane-cutting goals.

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“The digesters can leak, and they sometimes do,” said Francesca Hopkins, the UCR climate scientist who led the work. “But when the system is built well and managed carefully, the emissions really drop. That’s what we saw here.”

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Francesca Hopkins