Scientists have first identified an active leakage of methane gas from the seabed in Antarctica, increasing the likelihood that the planet is near one of the “tipping points” that would put the impacts of global warming outside the control of humans.
According to The Guardian, researchers led by Andrew Thurber at Oregon State University found the methane leak in a region known as Cinder Cones in McMurdo Sound, within the Ross Sea. The site is 30 feet below the ocean surface.
In addition to finding dissolved methane in the water there, the scientists found that the microbes that generally consume the gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only formed in small amounts five years after they began studying the site.
Thurber called the findings “incredibly troubling.”
“It is not good news. It took more than five years for microbes to begin to appear and even then there was still methane rapidly escaping from the sea floor,” he said. The Guardian. “The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society should be concerned about.”
Scientists have warned for years that the climate crisis could lead to the “tipping point” of methane leaks at the bottom of the sea and the thawing of permafrost regions.
“At some point in a warming world, nature’s greenhouse gas emissions will go beyond anything we can control,” Australian immunologist Peter Doherty tweeted.
At some point in an increasingly warmer world, nature’s greenhouse gas emissions will go beyond anything we can control. The only strategy will be to use technology to remove it from the atmosphere. The first active methane leak from the seabed in Antarctica is discovered https://t.co/4Y88iR2hyk
– Prof. Peter Doherty (@ProfPCDoherty) July 22, 2020
The Ross Sea has not yet heated significantly due to the climate crisis, so the research did not directly link the methane leak to global warming.
But climate models have not yet accounted for significant delays in the development of microbes, which help prevent methane from leaking into the atmosphere.
“The big question is: how big is the delay? [in microbe development] compared to the rate at which new methane leaks could form as a result of ice removal? “said Professor Jemma Wadham from the University of Bristol in the UK, who reviewed the study, The Guardian.
Thurber called the discovery of methane leakage and stunted growth of microbes “a significant discovery that may help fill a huge gap in our understanding of the methane cycle.”
“Methane is the second most effective gas to heat our atmosphere, and Antarctica has large reserves that are likely to open as the ice sheets retreat due to climate change,” it said in a statement.
Other turning points identified by climate scientists include the disintegration of the ice sheet in West Antarctica, the “extinction” in the Amazon that would transform the rain forest into a dry ecosystem, and the death of coral reefs.
Scientists raised the alarm earlier this year about the unusually warm water beneath a massive glacier in West Antarctica, and researchers warned in February that the third major bleaching event in five years on the Great Barrier Reef would put the reef on “at the edge of the razor”.
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