Global warming news December 15, 2011 Worrying news from the Arctic, where a team of Russian scientists have been conducting a survey of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. They report seeing plumes of methane – “continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter” – bubbling to the surface. There are hundreds of millions of tons of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost and seabed. This particular greenhouse gas is over 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. As global average temperatures continue to rise, more and more ice is disappearing from the Arctic, which is the fastest warming area of the planet. If the Siberian permafrost continues to melt, vast amounts of trapped methane could be suddenly belched into the atmosphere – leading to abrupt, severe and possibly irreversible climate change. Read more in The Independent.
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