Pacific Tribune

Archive for January, 2010

One hundred to one thousand times the normal atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas 25 times as powerful as CO2 at warming the earth, were found this summer over the Siberian shelf in the Arctic Ocean. The Siberian shelf contains enormous amounts of methane – 13 times the total carbon content of the earth’s atmosphere.

Much more here on this topic.

A vast shallow sea lies north of Siberia. One quarter of the world’s continental shelves are found in the Arctic. Seven great rivers pour carbon rich sediment onto the Arctic shelves. During the ice ages the very shallow and very vast east Siberian sea was above sea level causing deep permafrost to sequester the carbon at negative 17 Celsius. Enormous amounts of methane were trapped as methane hydrate ice.Rapid warming of the Arctic is now destabilizing the methane ice in parts of the east Siberian sea.

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