Methane a new Threat !!

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 15 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb.

"The effects can be huge," said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said. "It‘s coming out a lot and there‘s a lot more to come out."

"The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle," said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the study. "That‘s the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off."

Most of the methane-releasing permafrost is in Siberia. Another study earlier this summer in the journal Science found that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost — called yedoma — is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels.

The permafrost issue has caused a quiet buzz of concern among climate scientists and geologists. Specialists in Arctic climate are coming up with research plans to study the permafrost effect, which is not well understood or observed, said Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a study group of 300 scientists.

Most of the yedoma is in little-studied areas of northern and eastern Siberia. What makes that permafrost special is that much of it lies under lakes; the carbon below gets released as methane. Carbon beneath dry permafrost is released as carbon dioxide.

"I don‘t think it can be easily stopped; we‘d really have to have major cooling for it to stop," Walter said.

"The bottom line is it‘s better if it stays frozen in the ground," Schuur said. "But we‘re getting to the point where it‘s going more and more into the atmosphere."

izzix wrote:is doesnt look good as no government would ever administer the bad medicine ,Bush especially .

ray23 wrote:Not making a light of the situation, I mean after all we have oil for a reason. But how many times has the earths climate changed, we don't live in an Ice Age now for example. What changed that wasn't it global warming, long before the industral age.

How rapid was that change?

Is there something being missed in thi equation that we are seing now ?

I have no idea just curiuos