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Inconvenient study: Methane seepage from the Arctic seabed has been occurring for millions of years
wattsupwiththat.com ^ | February 6, 2015 | Anthony Watts

Posted on 02/07/2015 6:11:53 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

Despite the ever present wailing from green activists that we are sitting on a “methane catastrophe”, it’s simply business as usual for Earth in the Arctic. Even Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS thinks the issue is “implausible”. This study further confirms that the issue is just another emotional overblown green issue of no merit.

Methane seepage from the Arctic seabed occurring for millions of years

From the Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Climate and Environment

Methane gas flares, up to 800 meters high, rise from the Arctic Ocean floor. That is the size of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Golden Gate Bridge becomes a miniature, in this visual comparison. Video illustration: Aleksei Portnov, phd.

Methane gas flares, up to 800 meters high, rise from the Arctic Ocean floor. That is the size of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Golden Gate Bridge becomes a miniature, in this visual comparison. Video illustration: Aleksei Portnov, phd.

We worry about greenhouse gas methane. Its lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2´s, but the impact of methane on climate change is over 20 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period. 60 percent of the methane in the atmosphere comes from emissions from human activities.

But methane is a natural gas, gigatonnes of it trapped under the ocean floor in the Arctic.

And it is leaking. And it has been leaking for longer time than the humans have roamed the Earth.

“Our planet is leaking methane gas all the time. If you go snorkeling in the Caribbean you can see bubbles raising from the ocean floor at 25 meters depth. We studied this type of release, only in a much deeper, colder and darker environment. And found out that it has been going on, periodically, for as far back as 2,7 million years.” says Andreia Plaza Faverola, researcher at Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate, and the primary author behind a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters.

She is talking about Vestnesa Ridge in Fram Strait, a thousand meters under the Arctic Ocean surface offshore West-Svalbard. Here, enormous – 800 meters high – gas flares rise from the seabed today. That’s the size of the tallest manmade structure in the world – Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

“Half of Vestnesa Ridge is showing very active seepage of methane. The other half is not. But there are obvious pockmarks on the inactive half, cavities and dents in the ocean floor, that we recognized as old seepage features. So we were wondering what activates, or deactivates, the seepage in this area.,” says Plaza Faverola.

Methane seeps in the Arctic
Methane seeps in the Arctic

Why 2,7 million years?

She, and a team of marine geophysicists from CAGE, used the P-Cable technology , to figure it out. It is a seismic instrument that is towed behind a research vessel. It recorded the sediments beneath these pockmarks. P-Cable renders images that look like layers of a cake. It also enables scientists to visualize deep sediments in 3D.

” We know from other studies in the region that the sediments we are looking at in our seismic data are at least 2.7 million years old. This is the period of increase of glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere, which influences the sediment.. The P-Cable enabled us to see features in this sediment, associated with gas release in the past . ”

“These features can be buried pinnacles or cavities that form what we call gas chimneys in the seismic data. Gas chimneys appear like vertical disturbances in the layers of our sedimentary cake. This enables us to reconstruct the evolution of gas expulsion from this area for at least 2,7 million years.” says Andreia Plaza Faverola.

The seismic signal penetrated into 400 to 500 meters of sediment to map this timescale.

How is the methane released?

By using this method, scientists were able to identify two major events of gas emission throughout this time period: One 1,8 million years ago, the other 200 000 years ago.

This means that there is something that activated and deactivated the emissions several times. Plaza Faverola´s paper gives a plausible explanation: It is the movement of the tectonic plates that influences the gas release. Vestnesa is not like California though, riddled with earthquakes because of the moving plates. The ridge is on a so-called passive margin. But as it turns out, it doesn´t take a huge tectonic shift to release the methane stored under the ocean floor.

“Even though Vestnesa Ridge is on a passive margin, it is between two oceanic ridges that are slowly spreading. These spreading ridges resulted in separation of Svalbard from Greenland and opening of the Fram Strait. The spreading influences the passive margin of West-Svalbard, and even small mechanical collapse in the sediment can trigger seepage.” says Faverola.

Where does the methane come from?

The methane is stored as gas hydrates, chunks of frozen gas and water, up to hundreds of meters under the ocean floor. Vestnesa hosts a large gas hydrate system. There is some concern that global warming of the oceans may melt this icy gas and release it into the atmosphere. That is not very likely in this area, according to Andreia Plaza Faverola.

” This is a deep water gas hydrate system, which means that it is in permanently cold waters and under a lot of pressure. This pressure keeps the hydrates stable and the whole system is not vulnerable to global temperature changes. But under the stable hydrates there is gas that is not frozen. The amount of this gas may increase if hydrates melt at the base of this stability zone, or if gas from deeper in the sediments arrives into the system. This could increase the pressure in this part of the system, and the free gas may escape the seafloor through chimneys. Hydrates would still remain stable in this scenario .”

Historical methane peaks coincide with increase in temperature

Throughout Earth´s history there have been several short periods of significant increase in temperature. And these periods often coincide with peaks of methane in the atmosphere , as recorded by ice cores. Scientists such as Plaza Faverola are still debating about the cause of this methane release in the past.

” One hypotheses is that massive gas release from geological sources, such as volcanos or ocean sediments may have influenced global climate.. What we know is that there is a lot of methane released at present time from the ocean floor. What we need to find out is if it reaches the atmosphere, or if it ever did.”

Historical events of methane release, such as the ones in the Vestnesa Ridge, provide crucial information that can be used in future climate modeling. Knowing if these events repeat, and identifying what makes them happen, may help us to better predict the potential influence of methane from the oceans on future climate.

###

Reference: Role of tectonic stress in seepage evolution along the gas hydrate-charged Vestnesa Ridge, Fram Strait. A.Plaza Faverola, S.Bünz, J.E.Johnson, S. Chand, J. Knies, J. Mienert and P. Franek. Geophysical Research Letters. 2015.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062474/abstract

Abstract

Methane expulsion from the world ocean floor is a broadly observed phenomenon known to be episodic. Yet the processes that modulate seepage remain elusive. In the Arctic offshore west Svalbard, for instance, seepage at 200–400 m water depth may be explained by ocean temperature-controlled gas hydrate instabilities at the shelf break, but additional processes are required to explain seepage in permanently cold waters at depths >1000 m. We discuss the influence of tectonic stress on seepage evolution along the ~100 km long hydrate-bearing Vestnesa Ridge in Fram Strait. High-resolution P-Cable 3-D seismic data revealed fine-scale (>10 m width) near-vertical faults and fractures controlling seepage distribution. Gas chimneys record multiple seepage events coinciding with glacial intensification and active faulting. The faults document the influence of nearby tectonic stress fields in seepage evolution along this deepwater gas hydrate system for at least the last ~2.7 Ma.



TOPICS: Conspiracy; Science; Weather
KEYWORDS: antifa; arctic; arcticgashydrate; arctichydrate; carbondioxide; catastrophism; climatechange; co2; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; greennewdeal; hydrates; methane; methanehydrates; newyork; ocasiocortez; occasionalcortex; potsdamgravitypotato; seabed; seafloor; ydrate
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To: SierraWasp
From the comments:

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Jimbo says:

February 7, 2015 at 7:28 am

Sorry to put this comment here but it is a timely warning to the media about running scare stories over premature methane ejection. Nafeez Ahmed ran an earlier story, then Warmists came in on the attack over catastrophic methane release.

21 posted on 02/07/2015 8:30:43 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

WE need a new channel.. CliFY

Its a good thing we’re mortal

Less some of these noodleheads seep

Back into the galactic genepool


22 posted on 02/07/2015 8:42:18 PM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi - Revolution is a'brewin!!!)
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To: All
guess Jimbo was being serious about the media's scare stories....

Why the jury's still out on the risk of Arctic methane catastrophe

The Guardian..Thursday 5 September 2013 15.26 EDT

23 posted on 02/07/2015 8:47:01 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: All
More:

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simple-touriste says:

February 6, 2015 at 12:33 pm

And cows don’t need this stuff:


24 posted on 02/07/2015 8:56:54 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Where is PETA? That’s cow abuse!


25 posted on 02/07/2015 9:00:46 PM PST by TigersEye (ISIS is the tip of the spear. The spear is Islam.)
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To: All
More:

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GeeJam says:

February 6, 2015 at 10:48 am

As many WUWT regulars have already pointed out, ‘Methane’ will almost certainly be the new ‘CO2′ over the next couple of years. The CAGW ‘Sophists’ have a truck load of egg on their faces – they will be in total denial as, as yet, they have no real hard examples where recent ‘global warming caused by CO2′ has actually jumped out and gone Boo! Even temperate Spain has deep snow right now. The nice thing for us Climate ‘Realists’ is that there is considerably less atmospheric Methane (0.002%) to CO2 (0.04%). This is an excellent trumping point for additional incessant debate.

26 posted on 02/07/2015 9:04:51 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: central_va
"Apparently there were lush tropical forests and dinosaurs about the arctic circle at one time. /sarc"

It was all those damn vegetables. They polluted the air with oxygen and caused global cooling.
27 posted on 02/07/2015 9:06:24 PM PST by clearcarbon
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To: TigersEye
I think it is hilarious...and they are so damn silly!
28 posted on 02/07/2015 9:10:45 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

You know the other cows are laughing at them.


29 posted on 02/07/2015 9:15:59 PM PST by TigersEye (ISIS is the tip of the spear. The spear is Islam.)
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To: NormsRevenge

Speaking of noodleheads....see #24.


30 posted on 02/07/2015 9:18:00 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: TigersEye
LOL!

Clearly the dinosaurs left us with their excessive flatulence....you just know that has to be the case.

Between the cows and the premature methane ejaculation comments at WUWT I am laughing hard.

31 posted on 02/07/2015 9:24:47 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; 11B40; A Balrog of Morgoth; A message; ACelt; Aeronaut; AFPhys; AlexW; ...
DOOMAGE!

Global Warming PING!

You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.

Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.

White House threat assessment: Climate change as dangerous as terrororism

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Global Warming on Free Republic

Latest from Global Warming News

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Latest from Greenie Watch

32 posted on 02/07/2015 10:14:23 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Je suis Charlie, you miserable Islamist throwbacks!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

How about extracting all that methane and using it to heat our homes and generating electricity?


33 posted on 02/08/2015 12:09:56 AM PST by aquila48
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

It was a good thread.


34 posted on 02/08/2015 3:34:57 AM PST by Carry_Okie (Those who profess noblesse oblige regress to droit du seigneur.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
RE: "Even Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS thinks the issue is “implausible”.
This study further confirms that the issue is just another emotional overblown green issue of no merit.

Perhaps the evil ones in the White Hut will go after the Doctor on this one. He had better watch his six.
35 posted on 02/08/2015 6:08:08 AM PST by Marine_Uncle (Galt level is not far away......but alas! Honor must be earned...)
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To: SierraWasp; Ernest_at_the_Beach

To save our planet from killer methane, all liberals should stop eating immediately.

Mother Nature will thrive.


36 posted on 02/08/2015 6:25:13 AM PST by Grampa Dave (Will French, German & Belgians make anti-terror raids on our White House, AG Dept and Homeland Sec.?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; 75thOVI; agrace; aimhigh; Alice in Wonderland; AndrewC; aragorn; ...
Thanks Ernest.

37 posted on 02/08/2015 6:54:25 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary men)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Don’t forget the methane capture bubble experiment.. trap all the gases in a bubble like barn enclosure.. a MOOOOst interesting approach.


38 posted on 02/08/2015 9:22:27 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi - Revolution is a'brewin!!!)
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