Methane Time Bomb Ticking

Daily Planet Media, 2009-01-01

A Russian scientist who has spent the last 15 years tracking the release of methane from Siberia has raised the prospect of runway global warming caused by melting permafrost.

Igor Semiletov headed a team that sailed along the northern coast of Siberia collecting information of methane levels. His research concluded that 50 percent of a well-known shallow shelf was emitting summer methane with "large clouds of methane bubbles observed in the water column over hundreds of square kilometers."

Geologists estimate that the amount of methane (20 times more potent that CO2) stored beneath the Siberian shelf to be about 2,000 gigatons. Semiletov estimates that if just 1 percent of this buried methane is released, it will push total atmospheric methane up to 6 parts per million that would be certain to greatly accelerate global warming.

Leading climatologist James Hansen said while researchers were confident that methane hydrates were likely to remain stable scientific reports have noted that during the past summer methane had risen up through chimneys in the melting permafrost.

Similetov's scientific team found evidence from isotope analysis that surfacing methane had come from deep reservoirs. The latest survey along the Siberian coast showed that permafrost was no longer an impermeable barrier to methane release.

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