Read this frightening report from England’s The Independent on the shocking discovery of massive releases of methane gas – a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 – with the retreat of arctic sea ice.
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20
times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the
surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive
survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head
of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the
East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In
an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far
Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has
never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released
from beneath the Arctic seabed.
“Earlier we found torch-like
structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This
is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive
seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,”
Dr Semiletov said. (Dec. 13, 2011)