Undersea methane could speed up warming

Methane, found in natural gas, is one of the cleanest fossil fuels to burn.

But when methane escapes to the atmosphere without being burned, it can trap heat rapidly. That’s because methane is at least 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

A new study says if the world continues to get warmer, vast amounts of methane gas trapped in ice under the sea could belch up and worsen climate change.

“We may have less time than we think to do something (about the prospect of global warming),” said Dr. Ira Leifer, a marine scientist at University of California Santa Barbara.

Leifer has studied how “peak blowouts” of melting undersea formations called methane hydrates could release methane into the atmosphere.

The study was published last week in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a climate science publication.

Hydrate formations exist under the surface in permafrost areas of the Arctic.

The study measured the amount of methane that escaped to the atmosphere from a peak blowout from small volcanoes on the ocean floor off California. It found that methane escaping from the deep water reached the atmosphere, countering theories that methane seeps out in tiny bubbles that dissolve in the ocean.

Deep ocean temperatures are stable, but rising sea-surface temperatures could eventually warm the ocean’s depths and release gas.

“If you expose a hydrate to water that’s warmer than normal it starts destabilizing,” he said.