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Marine biogeochemistry

Arctic shelf methane sounds alarm

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 6–7 (2014)Cite this article

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Large quantities of methane lie trapped beneath the floor of the Arctic Ocean. Measurements in the southern Laptev Sea around the Lena River delta suggest that bubbles and storms facilitate the flux of some of this submarine methane to the atmosphere.

Marine methane emissions are not normally considered a key climate concern, despite the strong warming potential of this greenhouse gas. Significant quantities of methane are produced in submarine sediments globally, but the vast majority is consumed by microbes at depth1, rendering the net release to the atmosphere small2,3,4. However, where methane bubbles escape from the sea floor on continental shelves, the impact of bubble dissolution is minimized, enhancing the efficiency of transfer to the surface5. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Shakhova and colleagues6 present measurements to suggest that methane emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are on a par with those from Arctic tundra, and from the surface of the remainder of the entire world ocean.

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Figure 1: Measuring methane in the southern Laptev Sea.

© IGOR SEMILETOV

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  1. Peter Brewer is at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, California 95039, USA,

    Peter Brewer

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  1. Peter Brewer
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Correspondence to Peter Brewer.

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Brewer, P. Arctic shelf methane sounds alarm. Nature Geosci 7, 6–7 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2051

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