What is climate change? We all might have some kind of reply. What are the different causes of this threat? We may define the causes as increased industrialization, urbanization, land use change etc, etc which produces different types of Green House Gases (GHG). We may express a lot of   reasons of this evil i.e. climate change. But very few of us may be conscious about the fact that diseased trees also fuel up this Climate change to great extent. Ears of many people May not believe over this fact, how our woody friends may be a significant source of present climate change? The disclosure of this fact has added a new chapter in the study of climate change.

Methane is an important source of energy and a primary constituent of natural gas which is denoted by formula CH₄. It is a strong green house gas (GHG) which remains in atmosphere for a prolonged time for approximately about 9- 15 years and is over 20 times more effective infrared heat radiation trapper than Carbon dioxide (CO₂). It is found out that CH₄ has 21 Global warming potential. Actually, Methane deserves more attention than carbon dioxide because methane is more harmful and toxic to environment than Carbon dioxide.

According to the recent research by Yale school of forestry and environmental studies in the geographical research letter, discovered that diseased trees are acting as a significant source of methane which is a vital climate change gas. Although the trees outwardly appears to be healthy but internally hollow due to the fungal or any other type of attack, starts to eat the tree trunk internally creating  a favorable condition for methane formation. This methane formation process is accelerated by micro organisms called methonogens. I think, it is a globally significant discovery because there is no any forest where only healthy plants are found.  

During this research 60 trees were sampled at Yale Myer forest of northeastern Connecticut (a river in northeastern United States) and they were found to contain very high concentration of methane which was as high as 80,000 times ambient level. However, Yale researchers found average levels of 15,000 parts per million (ppm) methane concentrations inside a tree.

Red maple is an abundant species in the North America which is found to bear highest concentration of methane. The rate of methane production and its emission was 3.1 times higher in summer suggesting higher temperature leads to higher methane production.

Kristofer Covey, the study lead author and the PhD candidate at Yale said, "There are combustible concentrations of methane inside the tree". Really, this amount of methane production and emission is taking part in climate change with a tendency to make our future hotter. This increasing temperature is really cooking our planet.

During the research, the estimated rate of methane emission per hectare per year from upland site of Yale Forest was found roughly equivalent to burning 40 gallons of gasoline. It has global warming potential equivalent to 18% of carbon sequestered by these forest, reducing forest benefits of carbon sequestration by almost 1/5^th. If this situation is generalized in the global scenario, the methane emitted by these trees represents 10% of global emission of methane.

Many studies were done to discover the effect of fungal attack to the timber quality, but it might be the first study ever done linking fungal attack  on trees with the green house gas emission and climate change. Hence, this is a globally important discovery.