'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...dioxide.html#i

'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide

• 'Methane fields on a scale not seen before' - researcher
• More than 100 fountains, but could be 'thousands'
• Could cause rapid climate change

Last updated at 7:01 PM on 13th December 2011

The Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted a survey of 10,000 square miles of sea off the coast of eastern Siberia.
They made a terrifying discovery - huge plumes of methane bubbles rising to the surface from the seabed.
'We found more than 100 fountains, some more than a kilometre across,' said Dr Igor Semiletov, 'These are methane fields on a scale not seen before. The emissions went directly into the atmosphere.'

Earlier research conducted by Semiletov's team had concluded that the amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans.
Now Semiletov thinks that could be an underestimate.

The melting of the arctic shelf is melting 'permafrost' under the sea, which is releasing methane stored in the seabed as methane gas.

These releases can be larger and more abrupt than any land-based release. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane-rich area that encompasses more than 2 million square kilometers of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean.

'Earlier we found torch or fountain-like structures like this,' Semiletov told the Independent. 'This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing.'
'Over a relatively small area, we found more than 100, but over a wider area, there should be thousands of them.'
Semiletov's team used seismic and acoustic monitors to detect methane bubbles rising to the surface.
Scientists estimate that the methane trapped under the ice shelf could lead to extremely rapid climate change.

Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher.

The shelf is shallow, 50 meters or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or above water, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history.

During Earth’s coldest periods, it is a frozen arctic coastal plain, and does not release methane.

As the planet warms and sea levels rise, it is inundated with seawater, which is 12-15 degrees warmer than the average air temperature.

In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere.

That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.

Rather interesting development when combined with the below information...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

Clathrate gun hypothesis

The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the hypothesis that rises in sea temperatures (and/or falls in sea level) can trigger the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and permafrost which, because the methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, leads to further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilization – in effect initiating a runaway process as irreversible, once started, as the firing of a gun.[1]

In its original form, the hypothesis proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming in a timescale less than a human lifetime,[1] and might be responsible for warming events in and at the end of the last ice age.[2] This is now thought unlikely.[3][4]

However, there is stronger evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth on a number of occasions in the past, over timescales of tens of thousands of years; most notably in connection with the Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.[5]

Mechanism
Methane clathrate, also known commonly as methane hydrate, is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure. Potentially large deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth, although there are many orders of magnitudes in between the estimates of various experts.[6] In fact, the existence of vast oceanic methane clathrate formation is uncertain and usually only based on reflective seismology and pieces larger than 10 cm have only been recovered from three sites.[7]

The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits in runaway climate change could be a cause of past, future, and present climate changes. The release of this trapped methane is a potential major outcome of a rise in temperature; it is thought that this is a main factor in the global warming of 6°C that happened during the end-Permian extinction,[8] as methane is much more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (despite its atmospheric lifetime of around 12 years, it has a global warming potential of 72 over 20 years and 25 over 100 years). The theory also predicts this will greatly affect available oxygen content of the atmosphere.

Possible release events
Two events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. It may also have had a role in the sudden warm-up of "Snowball Earth", 630 million years ago.[9] However, warming at the end of the last ice age is not thought to be due to methane release.

Related mechanism: dissolved methane release
Focusing on the Permian-Triassic boundary, Gregory Ryskin [1] explores the possibility that mass extinction can be caused by an extremely fast, explosive release of dissolved methane (and other dissolved gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide) that accumulated in the oceanic water masses prone to stagnation and anoxia (e.g., in silled basins).

Current outlook

Main article: Arctic methane release

Most deposits of methane clathrate are in sediments too deep to respond rapidly, and modelling by Archer (2007) suggests the methane forcing should remain a minor component of the overall greenhouse effect.[10] Clathrate deposits destabilize from the deepest part of their stability zone, which is typically hundreds of metres below the seabed. A sustained increase in sea temperature will warm its way through the sediment eventually, and cause the deepest, most marginal clathrate to start to break down; but it will typically take of the order of a thousand years or more for the temperature signal to get through.[10]

One exception, however, may be in clathrates associated with the Arctic ocean, where clathrates can exist in shallower water stabilized by lower temperatures rather than higher pressures; these may potentially be marginally stable much closer to the surface of the sea-bed, stabilized by a frozen 'lid' of permafrost preventing methane escape. Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tons of methane being released, apparently through perforations in the seabed permafrost,[11] with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times normal.[12][13] The excess methane has been detected in localized hotspots in the outfall of the Lena River and the border between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. Some melting may be the result of geological heating, but more thawing is believed to be due to the greatly increased volumes of meltwater being discharged from the Siberian rivers flowing north.[14] Current methane release has previously been estimated at 0.5 Mt per year.[15] Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 Gt of carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5–10% of that area is subject to puncturing by open taliks. They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve,[16][17] equivalent in greenhouse effect to a doubling in the current level of CO2.

In 2008 the United States Department of Energy National Laboratory system[18] and the United States Geological Survey's Climate Change Science Program both identified potential clathrate destabilization in the Arctic as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change, which have been singled out for priority research. The USCCSP released a report in late December 2008 estimating the gravity of this risk.[19]

Possible outcomes
According to Gregory Ryskin, a sudden release of methane from the ocean may lead to either global cooling or global warming. The explosions and burning of methane would produce lots of smoke and dust, which would lead to global cooling. The methane and carbon dioxide would "create the greenhouse effect, which may lead to global warming". Professor Ryskin writes that it is "difficult to predict" whether global cooling or warming would result.

The evolution of dust and smoke, if it caused global cooling, would likely only last a short time before the particulates washed out of the atmosphere. Then the raised levels of methane and the derivative carbon dioxide would take over. The likely result would be an alternating series of extra cold and extra warm years, arguably more devastating to crop production than a trend in one direction or the other.

It may be possible to explain past marine extinctions by the scrubbing effect. If an inert gas is bubbled through water, the surface of each bubble acts as a semi permeable membrane. Gases diffuse across this membrane according to their concentration inside and outside the bubble. The result of bubbling methane through the ocean is to deplete the oxygen dissolved in the water, leading to ocean anoxia.

The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region "boils over," ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide. Firestorms carry smoke and dust into the upper atmosphere, where they may remain for several years; the resulting darkness and global cooling may provide an additional kill mechanism. Conversely, carbon dioxide and the remaining methane create the greenhouse effect, which may lead to global warming. The outcome of the competition between the cooling and the warming tendencies is difficult to predict.[20]

References
1.^ a b James P. Kennett, Kevin G. Cannariato, Ingrid L. Hendy, and Richard J. Behl, (2003) Methane Hydrates in Quaternary Climate Change: The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis, Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union. ISBN 0875902960
2.^ James P. Kennett, Kevin G. Cannariato, Ingrid L. Hendy, Richard J. Behl (2000), Carbon Isotopic Evidence for Methane Hydrate Instability During Quaternary Interstadials, Science 288 (5463: Apr 7), 128–133 doi:10.1126/science.288.5463.128
3.^ Todd Sowers (2006), Late Quaternary Atmospheric CH4 Isotope Record Suggests Marine Clathrates Are Stable, Science 311 (5762: Feb 10), 838–840 doi:10.1126/science.1121235 PMID 16469923
4.^ Hinrich Schaefer, Michael J. Whiticar, Edward J. Brook, Vasilii V. Petrenko, Dominic F. Ferretti, Jeffrey P. Severinghaus (2006), Ice Record of 13C for Atmospheric CH4 Across the Younger Dryas-Preboreal Transition, Science, 313 (5790: Aug 25) 1109–1112 doi:10.1126/science.1126562
5.^ The Day The Earth Nearly Died, BBC Horizon, 2002
6.^ Collet, Timothy S.; Kuuskraa, Vello A. (1998). "Hydrates contain vast store of world gas resources". Oil and Gas Journal 96 (19): 90–95. http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/vo...resources.html.
7.^ Laherrere, Jean (May 03, 2000). "Oceanic Hydrates: More Questions Than Answers". Energy Exploration & Exploitation 18 (4): 349–383. doi:10.1260/0144598001492175. ISSN 0144-5987. http://www.peakoil.net/publications/...s-than-answers.
8.^ Benton, Michael J.; Twitchet, Richard J. (July 2003). "How to kill (almost) all life: the end-Permian extinction event". Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18 (7): 358–365. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(03)00093-4. http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Benton/...003TREEPTr.pdf.
9.^ Kennedy, Martin; Mrofka, David; Von Der Borch, Chris (2008). "Snowball Earth termination by destabilization of equatorial permafrost methane clathrate" (PDF). Nature 453 (7195): 642–645. doi:10.1038/nature06961. PMID 18509441. http://faculty.ucr.edu/~martink/pdfs...008_Nature.pdf.
10.^ a b Archer, D. (2007). "Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change" (PDF). Biogeosciences 4 (4): 521–544. doi:10.5194/bg-4-521-2007. http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/r...ydrate_rev.pdf. See also blog summary.
11.^ Compare: Methane bubbling through seafloor creates undersea hills, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 5 February 2007
12.^ Connor, Steve (September 23, 2008). "Exclusive: The methane time bomb". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...mb-938932.html. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
13.^ Connor, Steve (September 25, 2008). "Hundreds of methane 'plumes' discovered". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...ed-941456.html. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
14.^ Translation of a blog entry by Örjan Gustafsson, expedition research leader, 2 September 2008
15.^ Shakhova, N.; Semiletov, I.; Salyuk, A.; Kosmach, D.; Bel'cheva, N. (2007). "Methane release on the Arctic East Siberian shelf". Geophysical Research Abstracts 9: 01071. http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU20...df?PHPSESSID=e.
16.^ N. Shakhova, I. Semiletov, A. Salyuk, D. Kosmach (2008), Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates?, EGU General Assembly 2008, Geophysical Research Abstracts, 10, EGU2008-A-01526
17.^ Volker Mrasek, A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia, Spiegel International Online, 17 April 2008
18.^ IMPACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate Changes, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory News Center, 17 September 2008
19.^ CCSP, 2008: Abrupt Climate Change. A report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research (Clark, P.U., A.J. Weaver (coordinating lead authors), E. Brook, E.R. Cook, T.L. Delworth, and K. Steffen (chapter lead authors)). U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, 459 pp.
20.^ Ryskin, Gregory (September 2003). "Methane-driven oceanic eruptions and mass extinctions" (PDF). Geology 31 (9): 741–744. Bibcode 2003Geo....31..741R. doi:10.1130/G19518.1. http://pangea.stanford.edu/Oceans/GE...aneGeology.pdf.
Benton, Michael J.; Richard J. Twitchett (July 2003). "How to kill (almost) all life: the end-Permian extinction event" (PDF). TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution 18 (7): 358–365. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(03)00093-4. http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Benton/...003TREEPTr.pdf. , cited by 21 other articles.
Svensen, Henrik; Sverre Planke, Anders Malthe-Sørenssen, Bjørn Jamtveit, Reidun Myklebust, Torfinn Rasmussen Eidem and Sebastian S. Rey (3 June 2004). "Release of methane from a volcanic basin as a mechanism for initial Eocene global warming". Nature 429 (6991): 542–545. Bibcode 2004Natur.429..542S. doi:10.1038/nature02566. PMID 15175747. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture02566.html.
Thomas, Deborah J.; James C. Zachos, Timothy J. Bralower, Ellen Thomas and Steven Bohaty (December 2002). "Warming the fuel for the fire: Evidence for the thermal dissociation of methane hydrate during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum" (PDF). Geology 30 (12): 1067–1070. Bibcode 2002Geo....30.1067T. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2002)030<1067:WTFFTF>2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0091-7613. http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/TZBTB_02.pdf.
Ryskin, Gregory (September 2003). "Methane-driven oceanic eruptions and mass extinctions" (PDF). Geology 31 (9): 741–744. Bibcode 2003Geo....31..741R. doi:10.1130/G19518.1. http://pangea.stanford.edu/Oceans/GE...aneGeology.pdf.
Archer, D.; Buffett, B. (2004). "Temperature sensitivity and time dependence of the global ocean clathrate reservoir". American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AGUFMGC51D1069A.

This is a LONG read, but quite interesting -> http://www.killerinourmidst.com/meth...tastrophe.html

well....that just beat out Al Gore. Great read though.