The “sleeping giant” awakens. Deposits of methane are starting to be released in the Russian Arctic

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Melting glaciers of Spitsbergen. “I was terrified of what I saw

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The Guardian reached out to – very preliminary so far – observations of scientists who are taking part in an international research project on the Siberian Shelf Study. Its main purpose is to study the cryosphere-climate-carbon couplings on the East Siberian shelf.

Scientists sail the Arctic Ocean on board the Russian research vessel “Akademik Mstislaw Kiełdysz”. They have just observed something very disturbing – where there will be frozen deposits of methane (and other gases, collectively known as hydrates) beneath the sediments at the bottom, known as the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle.”

In the area of ​​the Siberian continental shelf, in the Laptev Sea, researchers noticed bubbles of methane. While most of these gas bubbles are dissolved in water, the methane levels on its surface are now four to eight times higher than normal. This may be evidence that the deposits of the “sleeping giant” began to be released.

Risk of feedback in the climate

“At this point it is unlikely that it will have any serious impact on global warming, but the point is that the process has started. The methane hydrate system on the Eastern Siberian Continental Shelf has been disrupted and the process will continue,” he told the Guardian. Örjan Gustafsson, a scientist from Stockholm University, who is on board “Akademik Kiełdysz”.

This could trigger a new climate feedback loop and consequently accelerate the pace of global heating. These are only concerns so far, the scientists emphasize that these are preliminary observations, and their confirmation will be possible after analyzing the data on land. After that, the results of this work, in line with the scientific method and subject to review, will be published in a specialist journal.

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Up to this point, we cannot talk about a certain discovery, but only about suspicions, which are nevertheless very disturbing. Climate feedback is a situation where, due to global warming and climate destabilization, there are factors that increase this warming. So in this case, the rise in temperature in the Arctic leads to the release of methane, and if large amounts of it were released it could quickly destabilize the climate. Feedbacks can reach tipping points – when they start to fuel themselves and there is no longer any chance of stopping them. We wrote more about it here.

According to the researchers, the release of methane in the Arctic Ocean may be due to the intrusion into the Arctic Ocean by warm currents from the Atlantic, which in turn is fueled by man-made climate change.

“This is a new chapter. It could potentially have serious climatic consequences, but we need to do more research before we can confirm it, “he says, quoted by “The Guardian”, Igor Semiletov from the Russian Academy of Sciences, chief scientist at “Akademik Kiełdysz”.

And that’s not all the gloomy news that has recently come from the Arctic. This year’s melting season was the second most intense in the research history (after 2012), and then it turned out, for the first time since data were collected, that the main “center” of sea ice in the Arctic – the Laptev Sea – did not freeze in the second half October. The total extent of this ice in the region is much lower than the multi-year average, which is the benchmark.

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