Subsea methane release documented

[andygates]

You know that theory about how methane's trapped under permafrost and it could be a Bad Thing if it was to be released?  Well, it looks like it's happening.

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University, in an Independent article:  "An extensive area of intense methane release was found [in the Laptev Sea, North of Siberia]. 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]."

"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."

Oh, crap.

Comments

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Nope, but isn't the general idea that the clathrate gun triggers runaway warming, and increased sea-surface temperatures go on to set up hurricane seasons the likes of which even God has never seen?

I thought the methane releases I'd seen on telly were related to seismic events disrupting the "lid" - like the posited "bubbles of deth" Bermuda Triangle mechanism.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

As I understood it they were mostly triggered by sub-sea slippage (laying undersea cables can do it too), particularly the spectacular avalanches that occur on the edges of continental shelves.

Ooooh. All my old oceanography is coming out now. Those videos were great.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That's the ones. A little earthquake (not the Tori Amos kind) sets off an undersea landslide which disturbs the lid. Not heard about the cables, but that makes sense, any old big thud would do.

Crumbs, bubbles reducing buoyancy could be a real hazard for any attempt to tap clathrates for delicious tasty natural gas...