Global Warming

Fracking could be behind US methane surge

Startling increases in one of the main pollutants that cause global warming have been unexpectedly discovered over the United States – and the main suspect is the country’s booming fracking industry.

New Harvard University research, drawing on satellite measurements, concludes that US emissions of methane – a much more powerful warming gas than carbon dioxide – have “increased by more than 30 per cent over the past decade”.

The researchers say they “cannot readily attribute” the rise to any particular source but point out that US production of shale gas increased nine times during the same period, while other studies show that many fracking operations are emitting much more methane than has been officially recognised.

If the extraction process proves to be the culprit, it will show that exploiting and burning shale gas has been much more potent in global warming even than using coal, severely undermining energy and climate-change strategies. Both the British and US governments have been banking on shale gas as a relatively clean fuel that would act as a “bridge” to the low carbon economy needed in the next few decades if the world is not to heat up uncontrollably.

Global Warming

Warming oceans are releasing methane

Warming oceans are creating a whole host of problems. From driving schools of fish closer to shores, to disrupting fragile ecosystems, the gradual increase in water temperatures could spell trouble for Planet Earth. Now, long-frozen methane is bubbling up from the ocean depths, adding more greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere.

The most recent discovery of so-called methane plumes is off the coast in the Pacific Northwest. This is no small matter as methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and could potentially accelerate global warming.

Besides the West Coast, research last year found a huge increase in methane plumes off the East Coast. Given that methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, this could spell trouble for a planet many already believe is warming.

Methane is 23 times more powerful of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Methane is suspected for previously causing big and often sudden swings in the Earth’s climate. Much of the methane on Earth is actually trapped, frozen in the ocean, but as oceans warm up, this powerful greenhouse gas could be released. Global warming could thus accelerate.

Essentially, the methane at the bottom of the ocean mixes with sediments and forms a substance called methane hydrate. Methane is able to exist in this form due to high water pressure levels and the cold-temperatures.

A sonar image shows a bubble plume rising from the seafloor off the coast of Washington state.

Global Warming

Melting Arctic Ice Causing More Methane Emissions

The melting of the Arctic ice cap is encouraging more natural emissions of methane — one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change.

Researchers at Sweden’s Lund University worked with Dutch and American colleagues to find that the recent accelerated melt of sea ice around the North Pole is allowing the Arctic’s surface waters to absorb more heat and promote the growth of microorganisms in the adjacent tundra.

Those microbes in turn give off natural methane emissions that promote even further climate change and sea ice loss.

This feedback loop of warming and melting appears to have increased with virtually every new cycle over the past decade.

“While numerous studies have shown the effects of sea ice loss on the ocean, there are only a few that show how this oceanic change affects ecosystems on the surrounding land," said study author Frans-Jan Parmentier.

The findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Microbes in recently thawed Arctic tundra are emitting the powerful greenhouse gas methane because of the greater summertime melt of the polar ice cap.

Global Warming

Scientists have identified at least 150 000 sites in the Arctic (Alaska and Greenland) where methane gas is actively bubbling to the surface, mainly along the edges of lakes where the ice margins are retreating due to the melting ice. The Arctic is the fastest warming region on the planet, and the release of this gas which has been trapped for millennia beneath the ice, together with the methane being released across Siberia due to the melting of the permafrost layer may significantly affect the rate of global warming.