Methane bursts from frozen tundra (Nature News)

[jpak]

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081203/full/news.2008.1275.html

As the autumn cold begins to bite in the Arctic tundra, the freezing ground releases a large and unexpected burst of methane into the air. The emissions, thought to be squeezed out by the growth of surface frost, match up with an atmospheric methane surge that had previously gone unexplained.

Scientists already knew that microbes breaking down organic debris in the northern wetlands emit considerable amounts of the greenhouse gas methane, a process that has been carefully measured for decades during the growing season. But it was widely assumed that methane production drops to nearly nothing over the winter, because colder soil can absorb more methane and falling temperatures slow the decay processes.

So the research teams that maintain automated methane-monitoring stations in high northern latitudes tended to abandon them around September, explains Torben Christensen, a biogeochemist at Lund University in Sweden.

But last year, as part of the research push for the International Polar Year, a field station in northeastern Greenland stayed open two months later than usual.

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[hatrack]

1. Oops!

I find myself saying that a lot lately.

[Muttocracy]

2. positive feedback loop... nt

[XemaSab]

3. Can't we just flare it?

:shrug:

[pscot]

4. Yes

But first we'd have to spread a big plastic tarp across the tundra to catch the stuff.

[XemaSab]

8. I was picturing something sort of like center-pivot irrigation

Only this would be a rotating flame thrower. :D

[pscot]

9. If you'll submit your idea

to teh Energy Department, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Division, in the form of a grant proposal, with appropriate drawings and a plausible cost estimate and location studies, a test study project might be developed. Try to keep initial costs below 2 million per annum, with a completion time frame of not more than 3 years.
:thumbsup:

[hatrack]

5. Boy, Governor Swapmeet really IS going to be busy building pipelines, isn't she?

New natural gas exploration sites popping up pretty much every day from here on out in the fall, it would seem . . .

[Buck Laser]

6. Wooly Mammoth farts?

[FriendlyReminder]

7. Just say "excuse me" and move on.....