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Seafloor methane

Atlantic bubble bath

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 625–626 (2014)Cite this article

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The release of large quantities of methane from ocean sediments might affect global climate change. The discovery of expansive methane seeps along the US Atlantic margin provides an ideal test bed for such a marine methane–climate connection.

Sediments line the seafloor at continental margins and contain a massive and dynamic reservoir of the greenhouse gas methane. The global magnitude of this methane reservoir is staggering. It is estimated as one of the largest carbon reservoirs on Earth1,2,3 and contains about ten times more carbon than the atmosphere. Direct transfer of even a small fraction of this methane to the atmosphere would have catastrophic effects on Earth's climate, a process that has been proposed as both an initial driver of and a positive feedback to climate change4,5. However, the methane–climate connection is difficult to test because the sources of methane are diverse and the processes controlling methane release, especially those modulated by climate, are varied and rarely found in one environment. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Skarke et al.6 report the discovery of more than 500 methane seeps at various water depths and physical and geological conditions along the US Atlantic margin; this may well be one of the best locations to critically evaluate the interplay of changing climate and oceanic methane.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the seawater methane cycle.

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  1. John Kessler is in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA,

    John Kessler

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Correspondence to John Kessler.

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Kessler, J. Atlantic bubble bath. Nature Geosci 7, 625–626 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2238

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