HUGE METHANE PLUMES ARE DISCOVERED IN ARCTIC OCEAN

December 14, 2011

Russian scientists sampling the waters of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf have discovered enormous plumes of methane, some more than a kilometer wide, bubbling up from the thawing seabed. Igor

Melting Arctic Ocean Raises Threat of ‘Methane Time Bomb’

While scientists have long believed that thawing permafrost in Arctic soils could release huge amounts of methane, in recent years they began to observe methane bubbling up from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, as Susan Stranahan reported in 2008.
READ THE e360 REPORT

Semiletov, an oceanographer from the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said a research cruise late this summer detected more than 100 of these extensive methane “fountains” in an area of less than 10,000 square miles. Semiletov, who has been studying the region’s seabed for 20 years, said the scale and volume of the plumes far surpasses anything he had seen previously and could indicate that slushy methane hydrates on the seabed are thawing at an intensifying rate as Arctic Ocean ice disappears and sea temperatures rise. In 2010, Semiletov estimated that the emissions of methane — a powerful heat-trapping gas — bubbling from the seabed in this region were about 8 million tons a year, but he said the recent expedition has shown that methane releases could be far higher. “We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale,” Lemiletov told the UK’s Independent newspaper. Scientists fear that continued warming of the Arctic could release so much methane that the global climate could pass a tipping point and be pushed into an era of rapid warming.

7:51am | URL: http://tmblr.co/Z_lTmwDF92fd

(Notes: 15)