Scientists studying a volcano in Turkmenistan have identified a major leak of methane coming from a nearby gas plant, potentially offering a new way of monitoring emissions of the damaging greenhouse gas.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, they outline how they discovered the leak and calculated that it had emitted around 140 kilotonnes of methane from February 2018 to January 2019.

Previous satellite monitoring of methane had only been able to detect levels of the gas averaged out over a range of 50 square kilometres (20 square miles).

The team were using state-of-the art infrared imaging technology to study methane emitted from a volcano in the Balkan province of west Turkmenistan when they noticed an "anomalously large" plume coming from a nearby pipeline.

The equipment allowed them to measure methane spikes over an area of 50 square metres, proving that the gas was coming from the plant infrastructure and not the nearby volcano.

"Our work shows how satellite instruments can be used to monitor methane emissions from individual point sources across the world," the researchers said.

Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas emitted through a variety of natural and manmade processes.

In 2017 the International Energy Association said the energy sector as a whole emitted just shy of 80,000 kilotonnes, or 80 million tonnes.

Previous studies in the United States have shown that a small number of oil and gas facilities are responsible for most energy-related methane leaks.

While methane emissions are dwarfed by carbon pollution globally, methane is 30-80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2, depending on the time scale used to measure them.

The IEA's annual Global Energy Outlook this month estimated that 40 million tonnes of methane leaked from coal mines in 2018 alone.

That's roughly similar in CO2 equivalent to all global aviation and shipping emissions combined.

The International Panel on Climate Change says global emissions of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide must fall 50 percent within a decade in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Another major source of methane leaking into the atmosphere is cattle, which belch the gas as they digest.

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