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America's Methane Mystery: NASA Set To Investigate Hotspot Over the 4 Corners
schwit writes A "hot spot" of the largest concentration of methane seen over the United States is in the area near the Four Corners intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah and covers 2,500 square miles. The hotspot predates widespread fracking in the area. Researchers from several institutions are now in the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest with a suite of airborne and ground-based instruments, aiming to uncover reasons for a mysterious methane "hot spot" detected from space. "With all the ground-based and airborne resources that the different groups are bringing to the region, we have the unique chance to unequivocally solve the Four Corners mystery," said Christian Frankenberg, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who is heading NASA's part of the effort.
Coal bed methane, that is in the cracks and pores of coals, is old, old and well known thing. That's why the "canary in the coal mine", why miners die in explosions, etc. *yawn*
The natural gas industry spends billions of dollars to capture methane for sale and combustion.
This methane plume represents millions of dollars lost (possibly billions since its so large) -- if NASA can locate the source, I'm sure more than one oil & gas company would be more than happy to keep all that money from blowing away with the wind.
Go look at California... drought. What are the symptoms of drought? No water/low-water ... Perhaps this area in four corners has been losing water in it's aquifer and surface water for decades and has now reached a point where the gas isn't being dispersed by run off, and is coming directly from the coalbeds. Perhaps it's a sign that there's something "wrong" (in the geographic sense) with the area that may be dangerous if disturbed.
Captcha: Stench