They say the Beaufort Sea, in the western Canadian Arctic, holds clues to several environmental mysteries of global significance - chief among them why so much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is now seeping out of the sea floor.
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EVIDENCE OF LEAKING METHANE
More worrisome to many observers is the massive store of methane sitting beneath the permafrost in the form of gas hydrates.
The gas has been trapped under the sea for thousands of years, but there is mounting concern - and evidence - that it is leaking out as the climate warms.
In the past few years, dramatic plumes of the methane have been spotted by teams surveying waters off Siberia. A Canada-U.S. team has also found "extensive free gas release" on the Beaufort Shelf, which is pock-marked with holes the escaping gas leaves behind.
At one spot about 50 metres below the surface, the team's remotely operated vehicle found gas "vigorously and continuously" bubbling out of a sea mound, kicking up clouds of sediments.
The chemical signature of the gas seeping out from the Beaufort Sea floor indicates much of it is bubbling up through cracks and gaps in the permafrost that are liberating methane that has been locked under the sea for at least 50,000 years, Dallimore and his colleagues report.
How much methane is entering the atmosphere, and whether the rate is increasing as Arctic ice retreats and the climate warms, is not known. But scientists say it is important to find out because methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than car-bon dioxide.
The permafrost and vast hydrate deposits in the shallow waters of the Arctic pose "a potentially significant geohazard and may release vast amounts of methane to the atmosphere," geologist Matt O'Regan, at Cardiff University in Britain, says in a report outlining the "urgent need" for the scientific drilling.
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So it is now leaking out of the Beaufort side as well.