2024 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 02:07
Scientists talk about the discovery of "thousands" of new sources in the Arctic, where methane deposits have been frozen for millions of years, but due to the gradually increasing temperature, these sources began to be released and rise into the atmosphere.
It is known that the East Siberian Arctic shelf is melting faster than anyone else on the planet. However, experts say it is not yet clear whether methane emissions are the result of global warming, or their cause is different. It is also not known whether this hitherto unknown source of methane has recently become active, or whether methane vaporization has occurred for a long time, but only now they have been discovered.
At the same time, experts warn that if even a small percentage of methane frozen under the ice in the Arctic shelf of Eastern Siberia is released into the atmosphere, this will trigger a sharp warming of the climate.
"I don't think we are heading for a future catastrophe, but it is possible that methane emissions from sources like this will increase," said Ed Brooke, a geochemist at the University of Oregon.
Scientists have measured methane emissions for years. It is possible that during all these years, some of the emissions also occurred from a newly discovered source. However, in the past few years, methane emissions have slowed down, and then resumed with renewed vigor. Recent studies indicate an increase in methane activity in the northern hemisphere. At the same time, scientists admit that more research is needed to establish whether the discovered source of methane is new or has existed for a long time.
The concentration of methane in the atmosphere over the Arctic is now the highest in the last 400 thousand years and, on average, is three times higher than the levels that existed in what scientists call interglacial.
And the concentration of methane over the East Siberian Arctic shelf is even higher. The East Siberian Arctic shelf covers an area of 800 thousand square miles. It is the longest and shallowest continental shelf on the planet. More than 15,000 years ago, it was part of the Siberian tundra. And, as in today's tundra, there was a layer of permafrost under the surface of the shelf, which firmly "locked" the reserves of methane under the surface of the Earth.
As a result of the melting of ice at the end of the ice age, the northern regions of the ancient tundra sank under water, forming the current continental shelf. Underwater methane is much more sensitive to temperature changes than methane buried under the continent's permafrost. Indeed, even in summer, the temperature of the earth in the permafrost region remains below freezing.
However, on the shallow continental shelf, the water is only tiny fractions of a degree below freezing. Freezing does not occur due to the high salt density of the water, so even slight warming can lead to the release of methane into the atmosphere.
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