Thread: Undersea Arctic methane could wreak havoc on climate

Undersea Arctic methane could wreak havoc on climate

Updated 8h ago
By Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

It lurks beneath the sea.
No, not The Blob, but something perhaps far more sinister: methane, a potent greenhouse gas 30 times better than carbon dioxide at trapping atmospheric heat.

Research released Thursday finds that underground methane appears to be seeping through the Arctic Ocean floor and into the Earth's atmosphere, thanks to a weakening of the protective layer of permafrost at the bottom of the ocean. Once released into the atmosphere, methane could wreak havoc with the world's climate.

Although scientists have known about the methane under the Arctic— and its potential for leakage — since the 1990s, the study is the first to document it to this degree.

"The release to the atmosphere of only 1% of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits" could increase the level of atmospheric methane worldwide by three or four times, says the study's lead author, Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. That could trigger abrupt climate warming, the authors report. But the specific climate consequences are hard to predict, they say.

The researchers studied the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a section of the Arctic Ocean just north of Siberia.

Historically, methane concentrations in the world's atmosphere have ranged between 0.3 and 0.4 parts per million in cool periods to 0.6 to 0.7 in warm periods. Current methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the scientists said, the highest in 400,000 years.

"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans," Shakhova says. "Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap."

Permafrost, which occurs throughout the Arctic, is a layer of soil or rock at which the temperature has been continuously below 32 degrees for at least several years, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Methane is released when organic material in the thawing permafrost decomposes, which gradually releases methane. It also can be released directly as stored methane already in the permafrost is released as it thaws.

Why is the permafrost failing? According to the study, the process occurs naturally over thousands of years but is being accelerated by man-made climate warming. "Sustained release of methane to the atmosphere from thawing Arctic permafrost is a likely positive feedback to climate warming," the authors write in the study, which appears in the new edition of the journal Science.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is an additional concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn't have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere.

This is a new topic, Shakhova concedes, and the findings are only a starting point for further study.

"We're at the very beginning of studying this topic," Shakhova says. "This has never been incorporated into climate models."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/en ... 5_ST_N.htm

Why is the permafrost failing? According to the study, the process occurs naturally over thousands of years but is being accelerated by man-made climate warming. "Sustained release of methane to the atmosphere from thawing Arctic permafrost is a likely positive feedback to climate warming," the authors write in the study, which appears in the new edition of the journal Science.

Another crock from Climate Gate crowd. Can't sell CO2 anymore, so now its methane. At least it is from the sub-sea permafrost weakening. When I saw the article title I was sure the blame would be on whales, seals, walruses, porpoises, etc. passing gas, similar to the problems we get from bovine beasts doing the same on dry land.

If the Siberian shelf is such a threat, and concentrations are so high, why not "mine" the frozen methane as an alternate fuel source?

If they did that, then the commie greenies would be without a weapon of mass fear to push.