How much methane does one buffalo give off from digestion in a year under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Tier 1 method?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 Tier 1 table gives 55 kilograms (kg) of methane (CH4) per buffalo per year, the same for developed and developing countries, for a 300 kg animal. Multiply by head count, then by 27, the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) warming potential for non-fossil methane.

The factor and what it assumes

• Table 10.10 of Volume 4, Chapter 10 lists buffalo at 55 kg CH4 per head per year, under both developed and developing countries, with a liveweight of 300 kg.
• The table prints an uncertainty of 30 to 50 per cent for all its estimates.
• Cattle have their own table. For the Indian Subcontinent, Table 10.11 gives 58 kg for dairy cattle (average milk production of 900 kg per head per year) and 27 kg for other cattle. Do not use either figure for buffalo.

The sum, step by step

1. Count the average number of buffalo over the year.
2. Multiply by 55. Equation 10.19 does the same thing: the factor times the number of head, divided by one million only to turn kilograms into gigagrams for a national total.
3. Convert to carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) with a global warming potential (GWP). AR6 gives 27.0 for methane of non-fossil origin over 100 years. If your buyer asks for another edition, use theirs and say which.
4. Keep it as its own line. Manure methane, manure nitrous oxide and feed production are separate calculations.

What the table does not do

It has one figure for buffalo, so it does not separate milking buffalo from dry ones or young stock, and it does not respond to milk yield or feed. The chapter says emission factors should be derived on the basis of the characteristics of the livestock and feed of interest, which is what a Tier 2 method with feed intake does.

For an animal with no factor, the table footnote suggests taking the factor of a similar-digestion animal and scaling it by the ratio of weights raised to the 0.75 power, using the liveweights in the table. The guide offers that for species the table does not cover, not as a way to adjust the buffalo figure.

How this fits the dairy cow page

The answer on dairy enteric methane in India tells you to take the buffalo factor from the same chapter. This is that factor. Cows and buffalo are counted as separate lines and added.

A herd of 120 buffalo and 80 dairy cows

• Buffalo: 120 x 55 = 6,600 kg CH4
• Dairy cows, Indian Subcontinent Tier 1: 80 x 58 = 4,640 kg CH4
• Total: 6,600 + 4,640 = 11,240 kg CH4
• In CO2e at 27: 11,240 x 27 = 303,480 kg, about 303.5 tonnes
• One buffalo on its own: 55 x 27 = 1,485 kg CO2e a year

Head counts are example values. This is digestion methane only; manure, feed and farm energy are added as separate lines.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into emission records, so diesel for tractors and pumps and power for the milking shed and chilling tank show up once uploaded. The herd, manure and field figures on this page come from your own farm records.

• Dairy enteric methane in India
• Goat and sheep enteric methane
• Manure methane per cow and buffalo
• Member farm emissions for a dairy

Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 4, Chapter 10, Tables 10.10 and 10.11 and Equation 10.19, IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group I, Chapter 7, Table 7.15 (100-year global warming potential: methane of non-fossil origin 27.0, nitrous oxide 273)

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Tier 1 factors are from the 2006 edition. A later IPCC edition or India's own national factors give different values, so name the edition you used and keep it for every year.