Washington State Methane Clathrate Annual Output = Methane Released From BP Gulf Blowout

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It was big news: One of the largest potential contributors to global warming and ocean acidification is potential no longer, and hasn’t been for decades. A paper published last month in Geophysical Research Letters by University of Washington researchers shows that it’s taking place right now, off the coast of Washington and presumably other seacoasts around the world.

Thanks to warming sea water, methane hydrates (a.k.a. clathrates) — that's methane encased in frozen water molecules and trapped in seafloor sediment a third of a mile deep — are melting and releasing large plumes of a greenhouse gas about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Researchers have, for years, viewed methane deposits in Arctic sediments and permafrost as climate time bombs, But they neglected deposits at more temperate latitudes. Until last year only three methane seeps had been confirmed below the shelf break on the entire Atlantic seaboard.

The deposits are neglected no more. Last year another group of scientists identified 570 seeps along the north Atlantic coast. The UW researchers calculate that each year the deposits off Washington alone release as much methane as the amount that escaped in the sensational Deep Horizon oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico five years ago.

And the phenomenon is not confined to Washington’s waters. The amount of methane frozen in various ocean sediments varies according to the amount of biomass, from algae to whales, teeming in the waters above. When these organisms die, they sink to the bottom, there to be consumed by bacteria that release methane and carbon dioxide in the digestive process, just as you and I do.

EDIT

http://crosscut.com/2015/01/19/climate/123611/methane-hydrates-melting-off-washingtons-coast/?page=1

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1. Interesting article, both for the somber news it brings, and the glimpse into

how such data may come to light.