Amanda Leigh Mascarelli reports on the race to understand a ticking time bomb. Full Story »
Posted by Dwight Rousu
The latest measurements of methane melting suggest a ticking time bomb that could greatly speed global climate change and have drastic effects upon the global economy. The potential is being studied world wide because of the potential effects.
If those deposits were to melt, it would almost certainly trigger abrupt climate change. Methane heats the atmosphere with an efficiency 25 times that of carbon dioxide, and its release could put in motion a positive feedback loop
“These deposits rival fossil fuels in terms of their size. It’s like having a whole additional supply of coal, oil and natural gas out there that we can’t control,” says James White, a geochemist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Shakhova and her colleague Igor Semiletov of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, believe the plumes they’ve observed confirm previous reports that the permafrost cap is beginning to destabilize, allowing methane to escape from the frozen hydrates below.
Having remained stable for a decade, atmospheric levels of methane suddenly spiked in 2007 (Fig. 1). It’s not yet clear where the extra emissions came from and why methane levels increased uniformly across the globe.
