Massive methane leaks detected in Antarctica, posing potential risks for global warming

[cbabe]

https://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-02-12/massive-methane-leaks-detected-in-antarctica-posing-potential-risks-for-global-warming.html

Massive methane leaks detected in Antarctica, posing potential risks for global warming

A Spanish scientific expedition has discovered columns of gas emerging from the seabed. Geologists also warn about the possibility of huge landslides that could generate tsunamis

MANUEL ANSEDE
Antarctica Base Gabriel de Castilla - FEB 12, 2025 - 06:04 EST

A team of Spanish scientists exploring the Antarctic seabed has detected “massive emissions” of methane, a gas with a capacity to warm the planet around 30 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) The researchers, on board the ship Sarmiento de Gamboa, have observed columns of methane in the ocean up to 700 meters long and 70 meters wide, according to the geologists Ricardo León and Roger Urgeles, leaders of the expedition, in statements to EL PAÍS. These previously unknown emissions could potentially represent an environmental bomb for the planet’s climate.

What they have discovered is exactly what they feared. Scientists set sail on January 12 in search of these massive but at that point still hypothetical leaks. The compound accumulated on the seabed about 20,000 years ago through the decomposition of organic matter in the form of methane hydrates, a crystalline solid. “It is like ice that you could set on fire and it would burn,” explains Urgeles, of the Institute of Marine Sciences, based in Barcelona. The theory was that the thinning of the enormous Antarctic ice sheet, which began at the end of the last ice age, is causing a decrease in the weight on the land and a rise of the continent’s land mass; this phenomenon, known as post-glacial rebound, favors leaks of frozen methane hidden for millennia in the seabed.

Researchers looked for leaks on the edges of Antarctica, one of the regions of the planet hardest hit by global warming, with a rise in temperature of more than three degrees in just half a century. “We have estimated that in this area there are some 24 gigatons of carbon accumulated in methane hydrates, an amount equivalent to what all of humanity emits in two years,” warns Urgeles.

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[cbabe]

1. How to edit out stupid smiley face that stupid autocorrect insists on?

[hatrack]

2. You can't - just bump out the closing parantheses one more space

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[cbabe]

3. Thanks. I hate being manipulated.

[Finishline42]

4. I can envision some new tech that pulls CO2 from the atmosphere but

How do you reverse the oceans warming?