Warmer Pacific Ocean Could Release Millions of Tons of Methane

vinces99 writes: Off the U.S. West Coast, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water. Researchers found that water off the coast of Washington is gradually warming at a depth of 500 meters (about a third of a mile down), the same depth where methane transforms from a solid to a gas. The research suggests that ocean warming could be triggering the release of a powerful greenhouse gas (abstract).

Scientists believe global warming will release methane from gas hydrates worldwide, but most of the focus has been on the Arctic. The new paper estimates that, from 1970 to 2013, some 4 million metric tons of methane has been released from hydrate decomposition off Washington's coast. That's an amount each year equal to the methane from natural gas released in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout off the coast of Louisiana, and 500 times the rate at which methane is naturally released from the seafloor.

Comments

"Expected" to release methane

[popo]

One must note that environmental science is best at observation, and typically poor at prognostication.

Re:"Expected" to release methane

[Anonymous Coward]

One must note that environmental science is best at observation, and typically poor at prognostication.

One must note that slashdotters are best at making unsubstantiated assertions, and typically poor at well argued comments.

Re:"Expected" to release methane

[Anonymous Coward]

in no way negates the point of his statement.

There is no point to his/her statement; it's just a (pretty random) assertion. There is no reasoned point, no subtantiation, no reference, not even an anecdote that attempts to convince as to why 'one must note' this. So, when it comes to prognostication are environmental scientists hacks? Evil? Lazy? Incompetent? All of the above? Tell us! Don't leave us hanging!

Re:"Expected" to release methane

[St.Creed]

If I observe water temperature rising in a pot of water while I keep adding fuel to the fire, it doesn't take great prognostication skills to predict boiling water in the near future. So your observation is irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Re:"Expected" to release methane

[khallow]

Unless, of course, you don't know if you're adding enough fuel to bring the water to a boil under its current circumstances.

Re:How about a straight answer?

[twistedcubic]

I don't have enough field knowledge to combat every ridiculous claim, coming from either side.

I'd be interested in hearing an example of a "ridiculous" claim from the side which thinks global warming is real.

Re:How about a straight answer?

[gtall]

You don't have to believe in climate change to realize dumping large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is a problem. Just look at the acidifying oceans. Yes, it isn't methane (hence the difference in name and molecular structure). The implication of your statement is that since we have no good way of separating out the influence of man made climate change and natural climate change, we can forget about the controversy until the science resolves it. The science around the acidifying ocean is not in doubt except possibly by Sen. Sessions who never met a scientific fact he couldn't contradict.

You do recall the ocean, yes? Base the food chain? Screwing it up means you eventually go hungry.

The return of Cthulhu might be really bad...

[bradley13]

For those interested, this appears to be the paper. The paper itself is paywalled; you can look at the supplementary material, which includes the diagrams. Oddly, the paper does not seem to be online at the university, even though other papers by the various authors are. Why do I know this? Because I wanted to see the temperature data that they used, so I went hunting.

The paper implies that the temperature data is very noisy, but that they were able to extract a signal anyway. The raw data should be provided in the supplementary material, so that people could attempt to replicate/verify this essential finding. Of course, the raw data are no where to be found. So we have no way to check.

Personally, I'm tired of "science" like this. If you're going to make a claim, put your damn data out there where anyone can see it. Raw data, a clear description of how you processed it, program code if you wrote a program. Otherwise, you're no better than the astrologist pontificating about the influence of Venus on your dog's love life.