3 ms·
It's been forming there for a billion years. There's no hurry.
by JoeAltmaier 6y ago
It's been forming there for a billion years. There's no hurry.
- nitrogen 6y agoThe hurry is if warming temperatures cause it all to sublimate and release rapidly as gas, AKA the clathrate gun.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoIts distribution is sparse and on the surface. Its been forming for a billion years. Conclusion: it's sublimating all the time and being replaced. If there's any danger, its from the billions of cubic meters under the ocean floor (the source of the nodules, seeping from underneath). More carbon than all the oil we ever burned in our civilization so far. Is that in any danger of accelerated release? I've not heard of that.
- vkou 6y ago> Conclusion: it's sublimating all the time and being replaced. In the long-term, yes, it will eventually reach a steady state. In the long term, though, we'll all be dead. In the short-term, on timescales that human beings care about, no, we can release too much of it too quickly, before the system reaches a steady equilibrium. Methane has an atmospheric half-life measured in decades, so getting too much of it, too fast, can significantly spike temperatures.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vegetablepotpie 6y agoGlobal warming is causing undersea methane to be released much faster than it has in the past. > For the second year in a row, his team have found crater-like pockmarks in the shallower parts of the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea that are discharging bubble jets of methane, which is reaching the sea surface at levels tens to hundreds of times higher than normal. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-giant-arctic-methane-deposits-starting-to-release-scientists-find https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-gia...