Since in 100 years, the global warming potential (GWP) of methane is 28-36, what will be the GWP in 1 day time frame? Can it be calculated that way?
1 Answer
It can, but it's not very helpful. A large number of gasses (methane being one) decompose relatively quickly in the atmosphere to form other compounds. A longer time horizon means you capture all of that change in the metric (as compared to CO2), while if you did it for a day you'd end up with a figure that only really made sense for that day. The details of how it's calculated and why the time horizons are where they are is in the IPCC AR5 WG1 CH8 technical supplement (8.SM.11.1 Equations for the Global Warming Potential)