'Zombie' greenhouse gas lurks in permafrost beneath the Arctic Ocean

[Judi Lynn]

By Nicoletta Lanese 5 hours ago

Millions of tons of organic carbon and methane beneath the Arctic Ocean thaw out and ooze to the surface each year. And climate change could speed up this release of greenhouse gases, new research suggests.

The carbon tied up in organic matter and methane (a carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms) are currently trapped in subsea permafrost, which is frozen sediment that became covered by 390 feet (120 meters) of seawater toward the end of the Paleolithic ice age about 18,000 to 14,000 years ago, according to the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS). Most subsea permafrost sits on the continental shelf under the Arctic Ocean, said study author Sayedeh Sara Sayedi, a doctoral student in the department of plant and wildlife science at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City.

Because that sediment is in such an inaccessible spot, there's only a little bit of patchy data on how much carbon and methane lie buried there and how quickly those gases are escaping into the ocean and atmosphere above, Sayedi added.

Some scientists consider this greenhouse gas reservoir to be a ticking time bomb, one that could suddenly spew into the atmosphere and trigger a climate catastrophe. But Sayedi and her colleagues propose a different scenario: Rather than a sudden release, these gases have been slowly and steadily oozing from the permafrost for centuries. Human-caused climate change could still make the situation worse by accelerating the rate of release, but this acceleration would occur over the course of several centuries, not decades or years.

More:
https://www.space.com/subsea-permafrost-greenhouse-gas

[Javaman]

1. Imagine a person with two different sized feet...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=538

(I wrote this 9 years ago)


one is a normal sized foot and the other is enormously huge, grossly huge, freakishly huge.

Now imagine that person has to have to special shoes to be made. one for the normal foot and one for the oversized cartoon foot.

Further imagine that person has had a long day and their feet are really tired. They decide to take off their shoes...in a crowded room. The first one this person takes off and drops on the floor has a curious name. This person named this normal sized shoe "Carbon".

And so it drops on the floor. Some people in the room were first bothered by the fact that this person chose to take off their shoes in a public place, but when this first shoe hit the floor, only a few concerned people noticed and politely said something to the offending shoe remover.

Now, the person is unlasing the second shoe. The bizarrely oversized monster shoe. This shoe has a name as well, it's called, "Methane".

As the shoe wearing begins the slow process of untying the gigantic laces, not only are the first people who noticed the carbon shoe drop complaining, but other people, the less interested people have actaually turned their head in the direction of the potentially life threating social faux pas.

And when this shoe finally hits the ground, those who didn't complain, will complain the loudest.

(I will not correct my awful spelling until a spell check is reinstituted in DU. So point out my mistakes all you want, I don't care)