Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean – known as the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle” – have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal. High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 metres in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback loop may have been triggered that could accelerate the pace of global heating. The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases – known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. The United States Geological Survey has previously listed Arctic hydrate destabilisation as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change.
Guardian 27th Oct 2020 read more »
Thanks to global heating, a vital part of the Southern Ocean is warming at a rate five times faster than the average for the Blue Planet as a whole, in the far Antarctic depths: 2000 metres or more below the surface of the Weddell Sea. It is happening because at that depth the Weddell Sea has absorbed five times as much atmospheric heat − fuelled by greenhouse gas emissions from human fossil fuel combustion − as the average for the rest of the ocean. But what happens out of sight and far below the surface may not stay invisible. The Weddell Sea is where vast volumes of water circulate.
Climate News Network 28th Oct 2020 read more »