Lord Ivan Canas: The methane time bomb. Please read the 'more info' section.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane sometimes at up to 100 times background levels over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

"We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night," said Dr Gustafsson. "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."

At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.

"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."

The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.

The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.

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[ivancanas63]

You are welcome

[ivancanas63]

Thanks to all of you!

[savetheearthgirl]

OMG! Thankyou for putting this up we need to know these things!

[SylviaAdGirl]

Great piece, I will be reading up on this...I need to know more, thanks for sharing this.

[RasPesher]

@flutch02 Climate is about trends and averages. On average la nina is about 0.1 of a degree cooler than that of the trend for that same year. Every la nina year since 1980 obeys the formulae

TA = 0.013 Y

where TA - Temp Anomally and Y - number of years since 1980

In other words la nina years are experiencing global warming at the rate of 0.13 deg/decade.

Most energy comes from the Sun and no one is denying renewable energy.

I don't get your beef.

[RasPesher]

@flutch02 You seem to be confusing politicians with scientists. The scientist is the one who has obtained the evidence for global warming; not the politician. The politicians job is to come up with a solution to the problem guided by the science.

When U say that something is BS you are making a positive claim. The onus is on U to prove your claim. Had instead U said that you were an ignorant fool that no idea whether global warming was true or not, then there is no claim & no onus.

[RasPesher]

@flutch02 Contrary to popular mythology the government is trying to reduce CO2 emissions without dislocating our current economy. The aim is to produce a market mechanism to achieve this aim. You are correct wrt concerns about future production of CO2. The question is, is the Government doing enough. Methane is starting to thaw. Plumes of 1km in diameter are bubbling up from under the Siberian sea shelf. CH4 is up to 70x more potent than CO2 as a GHG. We may already be TOO LATE.

[RasPesher]

@flutch02 According to the Galileo Movement, Australia produces 1.3% of World wide man made emissions, not 0.8% as you allege. The Galileo movement is a political organisation in Australia that wants the Government to repeal the Carbon Pricing legislation. I don't think that they are likely to exagerate our production. Our population is about 0.33% so we on a per capita basis produce 4 times the average. The current World average is too high, so we produce 4x TOO MUCH carbon dioxide.

[EmperorofCartoons]

@flutch02 Thing is, with conspiracy nuts like yourself, the proof is all around you, you just refuse to accept it. I could write a long, drawn out reply about the difference in weather (Its coldest year on record.) and climate, or about how gloabl warming will eventually lead to large scale global cooling, presuming of course the methane scenario doesn't occur, but all of that would be wasted on you because despite being based completely on fact, you would refuse to accept any of it.

[flanksteak2]

@EmperorofCartoons Probably not. What we know is that you waste a lot of electricity playing on Youtube on a computer made of metal and plastic etc and theirfore don't even believe in it yourself.

If you do then aren't doing anything about it which makes you an elitist hypocrite.

[flanksteak2]

@EmperorofCartoons Everything

[EmperorofCartoons]

@sluterry wtf are you talking about? Real science supports man made global warming. Only conservative pseudo scientific quackery doesn't. You might as well believe in e-universe or niberu or any of the other various loads of horse shit those types believe in.

[EmperorofCartoons]

@flanksteak2 What did they say that was any less than a scientific fact?