Arctic Shelf Leaking Potent Greenhouse Gas
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 5, 2010 (IPS) – The frozen cap trapping billions of tonnes of methane under the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean is leaking and venting the powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, new research shows.
It is not known if this may be one of the first indicators of a feedback loop accelerating global warming.
Researchers estimate that eight million tonnes in annual methane emissions are being released from the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which is equivalent to all the methane released from the world’s oceans, covering 71 percent of the planet.
On a global scale of methane emissions from the land-based sources – animals, rice paddies, rotting vegetation – the newly measured emissions from the Siberian seabed are less than two percent.
“That’s still very significant,” Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, told IPS. “Before, it was assumed that this region had zero emissions.”
Although only a seemingly small addition to current methane outputs, this could have a significant effect on acceleration of climate change. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, trapping about 20 times the heat of carbon dioxide. The world’s oceans contain tonnes of methane trapped in permafrost on the sea floor, which, if released, could see a devastating rise in global methane emissions.
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