Methane Hydrates Discovered @ Surprisingly Shallow Depths In Pacific - AFP

[hatrack]

An international team of research scientists has reported greater knowledge of how gas hydrate deposits form in nature, subsequent to a scientific ocean-drilling expedition off Canada's western coast. A natural geologic hazard, gas hydrate is largely natural gas, and thus, may significantly impact global climate change.

The research team, supported by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), published their peer-reviewed findings, "Gas Hydrate Transect Across Northern Cascadia Margin," in the Aug. 15, 2006, edition of EOS, published by the American Geophysical Union.

Contrary to established expectations of how gas hydrate deposits form, IODP expedition co-chief Michael Riedel, of McGill University, Montreal, confirms, "We found anomalous occurrences of high concentrations of gas hydrate at relatively shallow depths, 50-120 meters below the seafloor."

EDIT

IODP co-chief scientist Timothy S. Collett of the U.S. Geological Survey states, "After repeatedly recovering high concentrations of gas hydrate in sand-rich layers of sediment, we're reporting strong support for sediment grain size as a controlling factor in gas hydrate formation." Prior to drilling, the scientists anticipated that gas hydrate would be more concentrated at deeper levels below the seafloor and more evenly distributed among the various grain sizes comprising the sediments.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Frozen_Natural_Gas_Discovered_At_Unexpectedly_Shallow_Depths_Below_Seafloor_999.html

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. This is way over my head and

pay grade :-)

[hatrack]

3. Methane Hydrates - a.k.a. clathrates - a.k.a. methane ice

It's a frozen form of methane that lies buried below sediments on continental shelves around the world.

You need to have one of two things to hold it in place - deep burial/pressure below sediments, or really cold water - that is, what might be buried beneath hundreds of meters of mud and rock and goo in the tropics can exist beneath just a few yards of stuff in the Arctic or Antarctic, provided that the water temperature's cold enough to keep it frozen.

The issue is what happens when it thaws. Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas - about 25X more so than CO2, though it doesn't hang around in the atmosphere as long. The problem is that if water temperature warms too much, there's the possibility that methane hydrates could be released from beneath polar oceans in one great big rush - i.e. billions or tens of billions of tons of the stuff bubbling up from beneath the surface of the sea in the space of a few weeks or months.

Good luck with the Kyoto Protocol and all of that if this takes place - big, bad shit happening to the planet's atmosphere in a very short period of time.

[OwnedByFerrets]

5. Thanks, that helped a bunch. nt

[bananas]

4. It's a greenhouse gas, currently frozen underwater off the coast of L.A.

When the ocean warms up a few degrees, these gasses will evaporate violently, destroying L.A. and then rising to the upper atmosphere, 20 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

[XemaSab]

2. so was it associated with sand or finer particles?

[Mendocino]

6. Permafrost may also hold hydrates

I remember reading that permafrost may also contain hydrates and or keeps them capped below. As it thaws, gases will be released into the atmosphere, exponentialy hastening warming. The amounts of hydrates that could be released from the tundra and boreal regions, primarily Russia and Canada, would be truly staggering.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. They do, and they are...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=44486#44623

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Don't forget metabolic carbon gases

CO2 and CH4 (methane) are produced in copious quantities by the microbes and plants that thrive in thawing organic matter in permafrost. This is one of the "inputs" into the Arctic ecosystem, and is part of the reason why the Arctic is heating up much more than the rest of the world (the Antarctic seems to be heating up relatively quickly, too).

It appears as if we've entered the Age Of Biological Positive Feedback Systems, and the most active organism of all, Humankind, is the one that kickstarted the process.

I don't have much hope that we'll be able to reverse the process unless we want to try something audacious (and epochally risky), like trying to block sunlight from high in the atmosphere or in space. Edward Teller wrote a paper proposing just that about a decade ago, and it ignited the whole "chemtrails" scare.

We should hunker down for a warming spike of anywhere from 10 to 100 years, followed by an ice age. If we're lucky, it will be a Younger-Dryas sized event, lasting about 1000-2000 years, and then the warm, moist weather will return. If we're not so lucky, the great ice sheets will form and not recede for, oh, let's just say, a long time.

We have the intelligence to cope with all this. The problem is that we have neither the will, the foresight, nor the wisdom. Dress appropriately.

--p!