Earth farts of methane may be the end of many things

[shunyadragon]

On Mars methane farts are good news for scientists looking for signs of life. On earth it is possibly really bad news, possibly caused by global climate change. When it goes corks won't help.
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Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mysterious-seafloor-methane-begins-to-melt-off-washington-state-coast/?WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20141217

Mysterious Seafloor Methane Begins to Melt Off Washington State Coast

Warming of the Pacific Ocean off Washington state could destabilize methane deposits on the seafloor and trigger a release of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

In the worst-case scenario, if oceans warm by up to 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100, the volume of methane release every year by 2100 would quadruple the amount by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the study estimates.

At issue are methane hydrates, which are complexes of methane trapped in frozen ice buried in ocean beds. The hydrates are found throughout the world's oceans and are maintained by cool water and immense pressures. But as the oceans warm, the hydrates get destabilized and methane is released.

Methane is a significant greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential 86 times as potent as CO2 on a 20-year time scale. Some scientists worry that a significant release from the oceans could exacerbate climate change.

"Methane hydrates are a very large and fragile reservoir of carbon that can be released if temperatures change," Evan Soloman, a researcher at the University of Washington, said in a statement. "I was skeptical at first, but when we looked at the amounts, it's significant."

Other studies have looked at potential methane release in the Arctic Ocean, but this is the first to study release in lower latitudes.

Gas bubbles up from the depths

The study focuses on the upper continental slope off Washington in a region of the shelf called the Cascadia margin. The ocean has been warming there, possibly due to a current carrying water from the Sea of Okhotsk that occurs between Russia and Japan. The sea has been warming over the past half-century.

Using temperatures of the ocean up to a depth of 200 meters recorded between 1970 and 2013, the scientists modeled the amount of methane that has been released historically. The preliminary estimates suggested 4.35 terragrams of methane per year may have been released along the Cascadia margin. This is equal to the release from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the report finds.

The scientists also projected methane release in the future by assuming the ocean would warm by 0.88 C to 2.4 C by 2100. As the ocean warms, the methane release would quadruple, the study suggests.

The released methane could be ingested by bacteria, but some of it may escape into the atmosphere and accelerate climate change.

The scientists caution that their estimates are preliminary because little is known about the methane hydrate volume and density at Cascadia. Further research is needed to better understand the scope of the problem, the study states.

© Copyright Original Source

[klaus54]

Shuny,

You've been taking about farts a lot lately.

Perhaps you need Gas-X?

K54

P.S. LOL

[rogue06]

Shuny,

You've been taking about farts a lot lately.

Perhaps you need Gas-X?

K54

P.S. LOL

fart.gif

[shunyadragon]

What form is this methane in?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

Methane clathrate (CH4·5.75H2O), also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice, natural gas hydrate, or gas hydrate, is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice.[1][2] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System, where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth.

Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere and they occur in deep sedimentary structures and form outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from deep along geological faults, followed by precipitation or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. Methane clathrates are also present in deep Antarctic ice cores and record a history of atmospheric methane concentrations, dating to 800,000 years ago.[4] The ice-core methane clathrate record is a primary source of data for global warming research, along with oxygen and carbon dioxide.

© Copyright Original Source

[Cerebrum123]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3199[/ATTACH]

[klaus54]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3199[/ATTACH]

I fart in your general direction.

K54

[klaus54]

Beans, beans, good for your heart...
The more you eat...

K54

[shunyadragon]

There is a possibility methane clatharate mass release from the oceans may contribute to mass extinction events

The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the hypothesis that rises in sea temperatures (and/or falls in sea level) can trigger the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and permafrost which, because the methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, leads to further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilization – in effect initiating a runaway process as irreversible, once started, as the firing of a gun.[1]

In its original form, the hypothesis proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming on a timescale less than a human lifetime,[1] and was responsible for warming events in and at the end of the last glacial maximum.[2] This is now thought unlikely.[3][4]

However, there is stronger evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of the ocean environment (such as ocean acidification and ocean stratification) and the atmosphere of earth on a number of occasions in the past, over timescales of tens of thousands of years; these events include the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, and most notably the Permian–Triassic extinction event, when up to 96% of all marine species became extinct, 252 million years ago. [/cite]