Flooded rice fields in China emit a lot of methane, especially during the rice-growing season. Researchers estimated that these fields release 2.44 Tg of methane per year over 2.66Mha of land. The emissions during the non-rice growing season were not calculated due to limited data, but it is believed they could be much lower. The findings suggest that flooded rice fields should be classified differently in climate change guidelines to better account for their methane emissions.