<
https://www.sciencealert.com/arctic-permafrost-hides-migrating-methane-that-could-skyrocket-emissions>
"A methane monster, lurking beneath the Arctic's frozen ground, is threatening
to rear its ugly head.
Scientists don't yet know how big the threat is or where it will strike first,
but what is clear is that the Arctic's permanently frozen soil, called
permafrost, is melting, threatening to uncap huge amounts of an extremely
potent fossil fuel from its icy prison.
If that occurs, it could seriously exacerbate the climate crisis, and yet most
research to date has only scratched the surface of how much methane lies below
the permafrost.
A new attempt to systematically analyze the distribution of deep methane in the
Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard has revealed a scary new truth.
Looking at the data from eight exploration wells drilled by fossil fuel
companies into the local permafrost, researchers in Norway found half contained
substantial accumulations of methane gas.
The finding suggests that deep methane, two meters below the surface, under the
frozen part of the ground, is not hard to find in the archipelago, and can
easily migrate to the surface when 'unlocked'. This probably goes for other
parts of the Arctic, too, which have similar geological origins.
"All the wells that encountered gas accumulations did so by coincidence – by
contrast, hydrocarbon exploration wells that specifically target accumulations
in more typical settings had a success rate far below 50 percent," explains
geologist and lead author Thomas Birchall from the University Center in
Svalbard.
"One anecdotal example is from a wellbore that was drilled recently near the
airport in Longyearbyen. The drillers heard a bubbling sound coming from the
well, so we decided to have a look, armed with rudimentary alarms designed for
detecting explosive levels of methane – which were immediately triggered when
we held them over the wellbore."
Despite more than 50 years of drilling by fossil fuel companies, this is the
first study to systematically analyze how much methane gas lies at the base of
Svalbard's permafrost."
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
