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Methane escaping margin seeps appeared to stimulate marine phytoplankton, which may have increased their intake of carbon dioxide.
Methane escaping margin seeps appeared to stimulate marine phytoplankton, which may have increased their intake of carbon dioxide.
The findings are a complete reversal of what scientists previously believed — that methane seeps in the Arctic Ocean were contributing to global warming.
"If what we observed near Svalbard occurs more broadly at similar locations around the world, it could mean that methane seeps have a net cooling effect on climate, not a warming effect as we previously thought," John Pohlman, a U.S. Geological Survey biochemist and lead author of the study, said in a statement Monday.
If the results hold, Pohlman's study could have big implications for how scientists calculate the global carbon "budget" and for future projections of global warming.
"This is ... totally unexpected," Brett Thornton, a Swedish geochemist who was not involved in the study, told Science Magazine.
A group of U.S., German and Norwegian scientists measured methane and carbon dioxide concentrations off Svalbard's coast. They found 2,000 times more carbon dioxide was taken out of the atmosphere than methane escaping from underwater vents.
Comment: Nature is much more complicated than Antropogenic Global Warming scientist would have us believe and thus the models from which predictions are made are far from reality.
To understand more about some of these many feedback loops read this book by Sott editors and researchers, Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection