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Global peatlands store more carbon than is naturally present in the atmosphere^,. However, many peatlands are under pressure from drainage-based agriculture, plantation development and fire, with the equivalent of around 3 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases emitted from drained peatland^{, –}. Efforts to curb such emissions are intensifying through the conservation of undrained peatlands and re-wetting of drained systems. Here we report eddy covariance data for carbon dioxide from 16 locations and static chamber measurements for methane from 41 locations in the UK and Ireland. We combine these with published data from sites across all major peatland biomes. We find that the mean annual effective water table depth (WTD_e; that is, the average depth of the aerated peat layer) overrides all other ecosystem- and management-related controls on greenhouse gas fluxes. We estimate that every 10 …