Ancient Methane Gas Could Accelerate Global Warming
Read Time:2 Minute, 59 Second
Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere and the end result may not be a happy one for our embattled planet. Climate change is real and inevitable and for each action there is an equal or greater reaction, and that is the fear.
The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts.
Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change.
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability.
There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites and farm animals.
Tracking methane to these various sources is not easy.
But the researchers on the new Arctic project, led by Katey Walter Anthony from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), were able to identify long-stored gas by the ratio of different isotopes of carbon in the methane molecules.
Using aerial and ground-based surveys, the team identified about 150,000 methane seeps in Alaska and Greenland in lakes along the margins of ice cover.
Local sampling showed that some of these are releasing the ancient methane, perhaps from natural gas or coal deposits underneath the lakes, whereas others are emitting much younger gas, presumably formed through decay of plant material in the lakes.
“We observed most of these cryosphere-cap seeps in lakes along the boundaries of permafrost thaw and in moraines and fjords of retreating glaciers,” they write, emphasizing the point that warming in the Arctic is releasing this long-stored carbon.
“If this relationship holds true for other regions where sedimentary basins are at present capped by permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets, such as northern West Siberia, rich in natural gas and partially underlain by thin permafrost predicted to degrade substantially by 2100, a very strong increase in methane carbon cycling will result, with potential implications for climate warming feed backs.”
Atmospheric methane concentration is rising again after a plateau of a few yearsQuantifying methane release across the Arctic is an active area of research, with several countries dispatching missions to monitor sites on land and sea.
The region stores vast quantities of the gas in different places – in and under permafrost on land, on and under the sea bed, and – as evidenced by the latest research – in geological reservoirs.
“The Arctic is the fastest warming region on the planet, and has many methane sources that will increase as the temperature rises,” commented Prof Euan Nisbet from Royal Holloway, University of London, who is also involved in Arctic methane research.
“This is yet another serious concern: the warming will feed the warming.”
How serious and how immediate a threat this feedback mechanism presents is a controversial area, with some scientists believing that the impacts will not be seen for many decades, and others pointing out the possibility of a rapid release that could swiftly accelerate global warming.
Many thanks to BBC News for their contributions to this story.
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That’s why Canelo made up with the WBC he needed them to back him in this scandle.
But not everybody’s hair read that textbook.
This ‘old’ gas I suspect is being released due to a change in our planetary heliospheric history. Before recorded history the Earth experienced compression and then passage into the back side of the compressive energy of cosmic space. Expansion and cooling resulted. This served to preserve the gases. 25,000 y the energy lessened so that the Earth was no longer passed thru the Majorana transform but remained compressed in front until such time as the energy released. Once the compression lifted, the heated planetary core released heat. The ‘blow out’ spread radon and other deadly gases over the face of the planet. Marchitto CU Boulder notes large ‘burps’ of very old carbon dioxide in the last 20,000 ys. Miles Mathis, physicist, says Jupiter’s attitude adds energy via the galactic core. I propose the degradation of the LT starbit known as Proxima Centauri as the declining energy source.