Across The Arctic, Lakes Are Leaking Dangerous Greenhouse Gases (ndtv.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Set against the austere peaks of the Western Brooks Range, the lake, about 20 football fields in size, looked like it was boiling. Its waters hissed, bubbled and popped as a powerful greenhouse gas escaped from the lake bed. Some bubbles grew as big as grapefruits, visibly lifting the water's surface several inches and carrying up bits of mud from below. This was methane. As the permafrost thaws across the fast-warming Arctic, it releases carbon dioxide, the top planet-warming greenhouse gas, from the soil into the air. Sometimes, that thaw spurs the growth of lakes in the soft, sunken ground, and these deep-thawing bodies of water tend to unleash the harder-hitting methane gas. But not this much of it. This lake, which Katey Walter Anthony, an ecologist who has studied 300 lakes across the tundras of the Arctic, dubbed Esieh Lake, looked different. And the volume of gas wafting from it could deliver the climate system another blow if lakes like this turn out to be widespread.

The first time Walter Anthony saw Esieh Lake, she was afraid it might explode -- and she is no stranger to the danger, or the theatrics, of methane. In 2010, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks posted a video of the media-savvy ecologist standing on the frozen surface of an Arctic lake, then lighting a methane stream on fire to create a tower of flame as tall as she is. It got nearly half a million views on YouTube. So now, in the Arctic's August warmth, she had come back to this isolated spot with a small research team, along with her husband and two young sons, to see what secrets Esieh Lake might yield. Was it simply a bizarre anomaly? Or was it a sign that the thawing Arctic had begun to release an ancient source of methane that could worsen climate change? One thing she was sure of: If the warming Arctic releases more planet-warming methane, that could lead to... more warming. Scientists call this a feedback loop.

Comments

Maybe they could harvest this natural gas

[aphelion_rock]

The global warming properties of natural methane are much higher than the properties of carbon dioxide after it is burnt.

https://www.britannica.com/sci...

Re:Maybe they could harvest this natural gas

[hey!]

While it's true that it's way better to burn methane than emit it, exactly how do you propose to do this with millions of acres of permafrost every year?

No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists have been saying for a long time that a warming biosphere would mean increased emissions of CO2 and CH4 from (no longer) permafrost regions and (in the case of CH4) underwater clathrates. The big debate has always been just how much would be emitted -- enough to accelerate climate change by a significant amount? Looking at the amount of carbon in permafrost, the potential is there for immense releases and a big increase in warming if even a tiny portion of the gas is CH4. But it's not at all clear how quickly these deposits will be set free. Real world observations, modeling, paleo studies all play a part, but a definitive answer, even assuming a trajectory for anthro GHG emissions is very difficult.

This is a very worrisome situation simply because we don't know what it will mean in the near future. We're probably not headed for a "methane apocalypse", but it doesn't have to be cartoonishly bad to make dealing with our climate mess much harder than it already is.

CH4 is 30 x more potent than CO2

[Streetlight]

Check out the following article regarding the subject and the source of the methane:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Feedback Loop

[jasnw]

What scientists (and engineers) call this is a POSITIVE feedback loop, in which an action causes a reaction which then increases the level of the original action. This sort of loop is highly unstable and can lead to extreme behavior in the system. There are also negative feedback loops, in which the reaction decreases the level of the original action. This is a stable behavior, and one that is quite often designed into all sorts of systems on purpose. If warming in the arctic ends up releasing large amounts of methane gas (something that has been postulated for a long time) that could end up making many of today's estimates of how fast the climate will change look very conservative.

Re:Top Gas

[hey!]

CO2 is not the top planet-warming greenhouse gas, sweety, neither in abundance nor potency.

But it's a champ when it comes to *longevity*, sugar pie.

The summary is misleading

[DallasTruaxxx]

FTA: "When the scientists examined samples of the gases, they found the chemical signature of a "geologic" origin. In other words, the methane venting from the lake seemed to be emerging not from the direct thawing of frozen Arctic soil, or permafrost, but rather from a reservoir of far older fossil fuels." So, NOT from thawing of permafrost. The summary is misleading.

Re:This is why we have to stop using fossil fuels

[Namarrgon]

Per capita, it's the third-lowest state - the average Texan causes three times the emissions, to say nothing of Wyoming. If CA were a country they'd rank about on par with Germany - far below the US national average, far below Canada or Russia or Australia or Japan or S.Korea. So yeah, they're a lot greener than most of their peers.

Re:Explode

[dryeo]

She lit it when the lake was frozen, probably just a small hole where the methane was venting and that's what she lit.
Now in the summer, there's no ice and methane is escaping all over the lake, much more explosive given a spark.