Around 100 million years ago , there was an tremendous relief valve of methane that made its way up from the ocean story into Earth ’s ambiance , which , along with a few powerful volcanic volcanic eruption , helped bring in about a deeply hot mood . Now , it come along that researcher wander through the Arctic have come up the scars of this methane ejection , which could transmute our understanding of present - daytime methane reserve store in geological caches across the world .
Writing in theBulletin of the Geological Society of America , the team – led by the University of Calgary – describe a series of house of cards - similar bumps on Canada ’s Ellef Ringnes Island , once inundate beneath the waves . Based on the smother geological bed , it appears that these scars all emerged at the same sentence , suggest that there was an tremendous release of methane back then .
“ The find of 137 former Cretaceous carbonate deposits [ in the ] Canadian Arctic Archipelago , establish the mien of an extensive field of methane seeps that occur over a > 10,000 km2area , ” the team pen in their discipline .
Methane breaks down in the atmospheric state far faster than carbon dioxide , but it is up to 36 sentence more potent as a greenhouse gasoline . Whenever it ’s releaseden masseinto the atmosphere , it often activate a rapid warming event that can lead to several regional extinction upshot . Although methane ooze into the water often ends up breaking down before it can scarper skywards , huge amount of it can abstract out into the atmosphere .
The most famed example of this arguably involve piazza 55 million twelvemonth ago , when a suspected , catastrophicmethane effusionled to a sudden warming spike heel , which ultimately triggered a series of die - offs and take about a Modern geological era . Other account have been cited to excuse what is know as the Paleocene - Eocene Thermal Maximum , but methane isoften thoughtto have meet a major role .
Methane is already escaping out of the seafloor . Seaphotoart / Shuterstock
This latest study suggest that a prominent methane oozing took place around the clip of the Cretaceous Hothouse period , when huge volcanic carbon copy dioxide effusions bumped temperatures up to 9 ° ascorbic acid ( 16.2 ° fluorine ) higher than they are today , destabilizing and melting quick-frozen depositary buried beneath the seafloor .
These polar cages of methane are hydrogeological feature that are still widespread today . A trulycolossal cacheof frozen methane was come up off the western coast of Central America just this class , for example , and the Siberian Arctic ’s permafrost isriddledwith the stuff .
In many case , when the outgrowth is n’t entirely geological , the methane is generated by a particular type of bug that sack say compound as part of their energy production processes . Importantly , the production of biogenic methane is an inevitable innate process that we can do nothing to terminate .
Although it ’s not yet cleared how much of this methane made it through the oceans and into the ambience , there ’s a good hazard it exacerbated the climate warming at the clip . This would have triggered a further warming of the oceans , and the sack of yet more methane .
Beyond a sure point , this self - reinforce process may have become unstoppable .
This positive feedback cycle , or even just a massive release of methane , may not needs happen in the present epoch , but it ’s still adistinct possibility . As the humanity warms today ( due , of course , tohuman activity ) , exist wintry methane caches will also commence to destabilize , unfreeze away , and escape , either into the ocean or the atmospheric state .
In fact , the team resolve that “ the widespread occurrence of methane seep deposits in former Cretaceous layer on Ellef Ringnes Island provide an splendid analog for the present - solar day potential of worldwide thawing - induced hydrate destabilization . ”
Methane can be detected leak into the sky today , include in the Arctic , scientists are n’t yet trusted what the critical temperature may be for a runaway warming force ; the chance of a methane - triggered acceleration in spherical thaw remain decidedly changeable . Either way , we do n’t really want to tempt the beast by driving up global temperatures as tight as we can manage .
The more we heat the planet , the more likely methane will begin to inexorably take to the woods from its frozen prisons . Lifetimestock / Shutterstock
[ H / T : Washington Post ]
