 Hi, my name is Giuliana Pagnieri. I am professor at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø and today with me I have Bebeke Åne. She is a high school teacher also from Tromsø. And in these days we are sailing on a research vessel which is called Kronprins Åkon and we are actually right now in the Arctic Ocean and the reason why we are here is because we are investigating methane, hydrate, gas hydrate and coal seeps. Before we go further on, would you tell us a little bit about what gas hydrates are? Absolutely. So the gas hydrate are the solid form of methane. They form when you have water and methane. So you have molecules of water that forms a cage and inside this cage there are molecules of methane. The peculiarity of gas hydrate is that in one cubic meter of gas hydrate there are 164 cubic meters of methane. That's a lot of methane. Where does this methane come from? Yeah, the methane comes from organic matter decomposition. So living organisms or organic matter which is decaying, plants. So there are bacteria that are basically consuming or eating these organic matter and while they are doing this process they produce methane. So they are actually living organisms feeding off this methane in the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, absolutely. Mostly microbes but not only. And where I've also mentioned, you mentioned in the beginning that there is something called coal seeps. Yeah, exactly. That's a very nice question. So coal seeps are places at the seafloor where you have methane emissions or gas hydrate. And these coal seeps are very peculiar because you can easily identify them at the seafloor. Very often you have white patches of material mats. You can have tube worms or you can have other kind of organisms. If you are very lucky then you can find bubbles. You can see bubbles of methane. And in certain conditions you can have also the precipitation of carbonate. So big blocks of carbonate. That's so fascinating. I didn't know that there was a whole ecosystem down there. But remember, the methane is also a greenhouse gas and it has a warming effect which is 40 times higher than CO2. But this is methane from anthropogenic sources. What we are investigating here is methane from natural sources. So from coal seeps. But wait a minute. You say that methane has a greater impact as a climate gas than carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas. Why do we hear about carbon dioxide and not methane? Because there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and it is increasing really fast. But the methane is less abundant. That is true. And it lasts in the atmosphere only for on average one decade but it is much more powerful. And the effect is much stronger. The CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for centuries for example. So let's say that the effect, the impact of methane into the atmosphere is shorter but stronger. So if I understood it correctly, methane can be both man-made and natural. And what we are researching here is natural methane. But I also heard that methane can turn into CO2. How does that work? Yeah, exactly. So when the methane actually encounter meets oxygen it can transform into CO2 and hydrogen. And this is actually why the seawater is becoming more acidic. So I have built two molecules, one of methane and one of CO2. The methane molecule contains a black carbon in the middle here. The black is the carbon. The white is the hydrogen. And they have single bonds between carbon and hydrogen. And there are four hydrogen atoms around the carbon. Here I have a carbon dioxide. Where the red is oxygen. And in the middle we have the black that is carbon. And we also have, in contrast to the methane, double bond between the oxygen and the carbon atom. So I cannot see these molecules but scientists have actually developed a method to find the structure for these molecules. But I have two bottles. I have mixed them up at the lab. One contains methane, one contains carbon dioxide but I don't know which one is which. So then now we would like to invite the audience to take five minutes to think about what would you do to understand which is the bottle with methane and which is the bottle with CO2. Hi, welcome back. I hope, we hope that you had a nice discussion trying to identify what is what. And these two gases, methane and CO2 are colorless, tasteless and odorless. So it is very difficult to distinguish them. Actually, people think that methane has a very bad smell but this is not true. The methane is odorless but are the processes actually performed by bacteria that produce this not very pleasant smell. But in any case, these two gases have differences. For example, density, molecular weight and flammability. Consider about density and molecular weight. I mean, we cannot really distinguish them, right, if we have it in our hands. But think about flammability. So the methane is a flammable gas which means that if you start a fire, then the methane burns and it creates this very interesting blue flame. But the CO2 is not flammable. Actually, the CO2 is the contrary because it is often used within fire extinguisher because if you have a fire, you can use CO2. The CO2 is denser, heavier, and it basically deposits on the fire. That's interesting because I always thought that methane was a bad smell. But do you actually say that it's the bacteria that does the smell? Yeah, exactly. It's the bacteria, so methane is odorless. But how we now know about methane, how we can find it, where do we know how to find it? That's a very good question. So we have three maps here. The first map is topography of our planet. The second map is the distribution of total organic carbon in our oceans. And then we have another map which is the distribution of hydrate, gas hydrate, recovered means that we have taken it, sampled it, or inferred. We think that it is stable in this area. So now I would like the audience to divide in three groups. So the first group will become expert on the map number one. The second group will become expert on the map number two and the group number three will become expert in the map number three. What does it mean to become expert? It means that you have to pay attention to your map, but mostly the number and the legend of the map. So now we invite everyone to discuss to become really expert on the map and we will come back in a bit. Welcome back. By now you have been in groups discussing these three maps and now you are an expert on each your map. Alone this piece of information might not make any sense, but if we put them together like a piece of puzzle, we might get the whole picture. This is exactly what we do in science. So scientists with different expertise, they come together, they discuss different data sets and very often actually this is the way in which we make discoveries. So now we want you to form three new groups. Each group should contain an expert on the map from each of these three maps. And then we will ask you to answer this following three questions. Question one, in what range of meters do we find gas hydrates? What are where do we find the most organic carbon content and where do we find gas hydrates? Welcome back. Now you have had the time to discuss about your maps but have a look at the map actually, what the map tells us. The first map on top is the topography of our planet but we see also the bathymetry of our oceans. This is zero, which is the sea level and then if we start for example from the middle of the ocean so this dark blue and then if we approach the continental margin we see that the blue from very dark becomes very light and along the continental margin we have this light blue turquoise area. This area is within 0 and 500 meters, water depth we say. And then we have another map which is the distribution of total organic carbon in weight, percentage weight in our oceans and the darker the blue, the less the total organic carbon in the sediment. While the green and towards the red is the more organic matter that you can measure in your sediment and as you can see these green and reddish color are mostly along the continental margin which means that it is there where there is a lot of the position of total organic carbon and this total organic carbon is coming from rivers so it's rivers which deposit organic matter like plants, leaves, organisms along this area and this is also where we have the highest sedimentation rate. We have then another map, this is the map number 3 and in this map we have the distribution of gas hydrate. In yellow the recovered gas hydrate so areas where we have been able to collect gas hydrate or inferred gas hydrate, for you highlighted in red. And inferred gas hydrate means that those are areas where we think that there is gas hydrate because there are the right conditions for the gas hydrate to form which means water of course, methane, high pressure and low temperature. So now we know what each map tells us let's answer the questions you were asked during the previous activity. So the first question is at what depth do we find most methane hydrate? Okay, so in order to answer these questions we have to look at the map number 1 and the map number 3. So the map number 1 tells you where are the continental margin actually and which is the water depth. The map number 3 tells you where there are or where we think that there are gas hydrate and we see that the gas hydrate is mostly distributed along the continental margin where the water depth is less than 500 meters. The second question was where do we have the most organic carbon content? To answer these questions we have to look at the map number 2. This is exactly the map that tells you that most of the organic carbon, the organic matter, is distributed along the continental margin and exactly where you have the main rivers, right? Because they actually transport a lot of organic matter and if we remember what we said before there are communities of bacteria that degrade, consume the organic matter to produce methane. And the last question was where do we... What are the conditions where you find most gas hydrates? Well, most gas hydrates... And why? Yes, thanks, Vibheke. And to answer this question we have actually to look at all the maps. So, we know that the gas hydrate is distributed mostly along the continental margin because this is exactly where we have most of the position of organic carbon then production of methane and along the continental margin we have actually the right condition for the formation of gas hydrate. So we have the right temperature and the right pressure. We have to keep in mind that the gas hydrate can form also a deeper water depth but most of the time they are located along the continental margin. So now we know where we find these methane hydrates but how do we explore them and how do we take samples? I'm glad, Vibheke, you asked these questions because on this vessel I have the possibility to show you and to show our audience which are the tools that we use to investigate gas hydrate, methane and coal sieves. So come with me, we have a look. Come into the ROV Anger. The ROV is our remotely operated vehicle which is actually the tool, the instrument that we use to collect the data and the samples which are needed to investigate methane, gas hydrate and coal sieves. So what is the ROV actually? The ROV is our eyes and our end at the seafloor. So we have cameras, several cameras, we have light and this is actually our eyes on the seafloor so we can spot actually this particular environment. And then we have the arm. So there is a pilot which manipulates the arm of the ROV and with these arms we have the possibility to collect the samples that are needed for our search. For example, this is a push core and the push core is this transparent liner that with one of the arms we push into the sediment and we collect the sediments on which then we will do several kinds of investigation like for example we measure the total organic carbon, the concentration of methane for example. And then we have other instrument that give us the possibility to collect different kind of data. So you mentioned these organisms. What kind of organisms are there? Yeah, we know now that this peculiar environment are characterized by patches of bacterial mats. We can also have for example tube worms and we can have also other organisms living in connection with these biochemical processes that occur at cold seeps like bibles or clams or gastropole but also other organisms can take advantage of the extra food of source which is available at the seafloor. Thank you so much for showing us this ROV Juliana. It's very interesting to see how the scientists use it to collect samples from the seafloor. It's quite noisy here. So let's go back to the room and do a recap. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed to watch the ROV. Let's do a recap of what we have done. So we have learned a lot about methane and how it differs from CO2. We have learned a lot about the molecular structure and properties of methane such as flammability. We also have learned a lot about different methane sources and how it has an impact on the atmosphere. We also have learned a lot about gas hydrates and where we find them such as along the continental margins and where we have a high organic carbon content. And we also have learned a lot about how scientists use ROV to do sample on the ocean floor to learn more about natural methane emission. Now I think the question for the audience and also for you is to how can we as individuals or collectively reduce methane emission? Yeah, well actually we can do a lot as an individual and I'm not talking about natural methane emission but anthropogenic methane emission. So if we think about for example livestock, cattle, sheep, goat or for example farming or for example fossil fuel production on waste management we can do a lot. Taking into consideration that 32% of the methane emission into the atmosphere are coming from farming. So if we stop eating red meat we might actually decrease this percentage of methane emission that goes into the atmosphere. But think for example about fossil fuel production. During the production of fossil fuel we emit intentionally or not intentionally a lot of methane into the atmosphere. And then of course if we drive less car, if we take public transportation, if we fly less then we might actually reduce methane, anthropogenic methane in the atmosphere. So good to hear that there are actually things we can do and actions we can take. Yeah, exactly. And with this I would like to thank Vibecche Aune. I would like to thank you, the audience, for being with me, with us today on this research vessel. If you want to hear more about methane I strongly suggest you to google our website ACMA which stands for Advancing Knowledge on Methane in the Arctic. So thanks a lot for being with us with me today. Hello, thank you for considering this as a part of your lesson. By this segment I hope to give you some tips how to implement this into your classroom and how to engage your students. So this video lesson is made for first year high school students 15 to 16 years old in general science in Norway. It will include concepts from different subjects such as chemistry, biology and geology. It can be adapted to higher or lower grade all over the world. And the length of this video lesson is for approximately one hour and should be half and half video and activity and we will have three activities for this lesson. The learning objectives for the activities are as follows. For activity one we want to learn some of the basic steps of scientific method such as making observations, asking questions and setting a hypothesis. For activity two and three we want the students to learn and discover where the earth gas methane hydrates are, what accumulates at continental margins and how scientists study methane and gas hydrates. These activities are based on observations and discussions so there are no requirements for prior knowledge. But it might be helpful if the students are familiar with reading and understanding maps. Other concepts that you may want to consider to implement are chemical bonding and molecular structure. And also greenhouse gas and climate and how greenhouse gas impacts the climate. There are some materials that you will need for this activity. You may need a molecular kit that's optional for making these molecules. It can be easy for the student to have something to look at. If you don't have a molecular kit you could use build molecules by clay and straw. But this is optional. But you need three maps printed in colors that will be attached in the lesson package as PDFs. And we will also supply extra images and videos from the ROV which show the C floor. That's also optional for you to use if you want. So as I said we have three activities and four segments in the video. After watching one segment you pause and you have an activity and then you start watching the video again. So for the first activity we have the mystery bottle which we want to be engaging for the students. We want them to explore and discuss and explain their ideas. You should not stop them and they should be free to say whatever they want because if it's some misconception here. You only facilitate and guide the discussion either in group or in class. You as a teacher will know what's best for your students and I will encourage you to write down their ideas so that you can maybe see if some of them will be taken up in the video after. The activity two and three is exercise based on observation and describing. You will be having three maps of large scale processes which will be included as I said in the lesson package. So we'll have map one which you also see behind me here but map one is showing the topography and bathymetry of the earth which shows the elevation on land and the depth at sea. And here on this side you will see the scale and the different colors corresponded to different depths and heights. Pay attention to these legends. The map two shows the organic carbon content in weight percentage of sediment and also here you have different colors corresponding to different weight process. The map three shows gas hydrates around the world both the covered hydrate, inferred hydrate and drilling expeditions. So to prepare the activities I will encourage you to print the three maps in large scale and maybe laminate them so you can reuse them later and you hang them on a wall so that 8 to 10 students can stand around and discuss. I find it more easier for the students to have discussions standing than sitting. If you are in short of space you can have it on a desk and tape it on a desk and the students sitting around discussing. But each student should also have their own all map to bring to another group at the end. So for activity two they only watch the map try to understand what it means what the legend says and really just understand this map. They are becoming an expert on their map. The description should contain words such as deep, shallow, high organic carbon content and so on. You as a teacher circulate and listen to what they say and maybe clarify if there are some misconceptions. So this should take approximately 10 minutes. The last activity, the activity three they will then go to new groups which should contain each expert on one map. They start by explaining their maps to the other group members and then they will go on answering the three questions that were posted in the video. You see them also behind me here and they need to collaborate the group to answer this question. Again, you as a teacher you will circulate, listen to what they say maybe clarify if there are some misconceptions and this should take approximately 15 minutes. The last segment and the end of this lesson where we show you how the researchers use technological tools to research the sea floor. We want the students to have an impression of what the sea floor looks like so that's why we will give you some images also and extra images if you want to explore it a little bit more and videos if you also want to have a more exploration of this. So I hope you still find this interesting and that this will be something nice to put into your lessons and if you have any questions please visit the Akma website and I hope there you will find some more videos and also in the package you will find extra material. Thank you.