1. Introduction

With the growing awareness toward the detrimental impacts of climate change, identifying and controlling of potential sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission have become a universal priority. Livestock farming is one of the most prominent anthropogenic sources of GHGs [1–3]. The total global GHG emission from livestock is 7.1 gigatonnes CO2e year<sup>1</sup> , which accounts for 14.5% of all anthropogenic emissions [4, 5]. India, China, Brazil, and the USA are major regional contributors of GHG emission from livestock [6]. The growing economy and increasing demand for livestock products such as meat and dairy products increase challenges on livestock production and thus risk for climate change [7]. Therefore, it is very important in the coming future to reduce GHG emissions from livestock and promote sustainable livestock farming [8].

For sustainable livestock farming, climate change impact assessment of GHG emission and effective climate mitigation policies development are needed. For

climate impact assessment, different climate metrics are being used to assess the climatic impact of non-CO2 GHGs in terms of CO2 equivalent emission [9, 10]. These climate metrics are estimated in tonnes of CO2e per year by multiplying each non-CO2 GHG emission with their absolute value [11]. Different climate metrics are available with different time horizons such as 20, 50, and 100 years, and it can be used for different non-CO2 GHGs [6]. The assessment may be applied instantaneously or may be integrated over a specified period of time [6]. In IPCC first assessment report, global warming potential (GWP) is proposed as a method for comparing the potential climate impact of different non-CO2 GHGs with reference to CO2 [12]. But later on, the use of GWP in climate impact assessment has not been encouraged by many scientists as GWP does not explain the magnitude of climate change, i.e., impact on temperature rise [12, 13]. Thus, [14] proposed the global surface temperature change potential (GTP) as an alternative metric to GWP to assess climate change impact of GHG emission on climate change to assess its potential impact on surface temperature rise.

The GTP is the ratio of the change in the global mean surface temperature due to pulse or sustained GHG emission relative to CO2 at a given time period. The GTP is more useful for those GHGs which have lifetime less than CO2 such as short-lived GHG: CH4 [15–17]. In comparison with GWP, the GTP gives climate impact in terms of change in temperature, and so it is a more policy-relevant tool for climate change impact mitigation [13, 15].

The negative climate change impact due to CH4 emission is global in nature, not only restricted to India. Thus, the present chapter is focused on livestockmediated CH4 emission estimation in India and also to assess its role in climate change impact in terms of global surface temperature change potential (GTP) and absolute global surface temperature change potential (AGTP) for potential rise in surface temperature to identify the role of Indian livestock in climate change impact. This study focuses to evaluate the impact of livestock-mediated CH4 emission on surface temperature change. Thus, the study helps researchers and scientists to predict climate change impact evaluation in terms of potential rise in global surface temperature using climate metrics due to any anthropogenic emission sources in future.

2.2 Estimation of CH4 emission

GIS mapping at district, state, and national level.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81713

Figure 1.

\*

155

Table 1.

IPCC 2006 guidelines.

tion is shown in Table 2 as Eq. (1).

2.3 Other climatic metric assessments

Specific CH4 emission factor\* (kg CH4 head<sup>1</sup> year<sup>1</sup>

Here, in IPCC guidelines, Tier 1 methodology is used for CH4 emission estimation [20]. In IPCC Tier 1 methodology, country-wise livestock category-wise spe-

Flow chart of methodology for estimation of CH4 and climate metrics assessment. And results are represented in

Methane Emission Assessment from Indian Livestock and Its Role in Climate Change Using…

management as shown in Table 1. The equation followed in CH4 emission estima-

The second objective of the present work of the book chapter is climate metric assessment of livestock-related CH4 emission. Two climate metrics, viz., global surface temperature change potential (GTP) and absolute global surface temperature change potential (AGTP) and surface temperature response were applied for the CH4 emission estimation from livestock at district, state, and national level.

Category Enteric fermentation Manure management

Non-dairy 27 2

) of different livestock categories.

Cattle Dairy cattle 58 5

Buffalo 55 4 Sheep 5 2 Goat 5 0.22

cific emission factors are available for enteric fermentation and manure
