IT’S been predicted for years, and now it’s happening. Deep in the Arctic Ocean, rising temperatures appear to be triggering the release of methane from beneath the sea floor.
Over 250 plumes of gas – mostly methane – have been discovered bubbling up in the sea west of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. This is the first time such plumes have been seen. As a greenhouse gas, methane is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The plumes, discovered by an expedition led by Graham Westbrook of the University of Birmingham, UK, are probably coming from methane hydrates – chunks of ice laced with the gas – beneath the seabed. The west Spitsbergen current, which flows through the region, has warmed by 1 °C over the past 30 years.
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None of the plumes the team saw reached the surface, though larger plumes might be able to do so. While the methane has not been seen escaping into the atmosphere, some of the gas is converted into dissolved CO2 as it rises, making the ocean more acid.