Sentences with phrase «release huge amounts of methane»

Many researchers predict that thawing permafrost could release huge amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide — as global temperatures rise.

Global warming's greater than anticipated impact on permafrost will release huge amounts of methane and carbon dioxide as the soil thaws.

Not exact matches

For example, some suggest that melting arctic permafrost could result in the decay of huge amounts of organic matter, releasing more CO2 and methane.

Regarding the amounts of methane released into the atmosphere, according to Dr. Natalia Shakhova of the International Arctic Research Centre: «The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries... That's a huge increase, between two and three times, and this has never happened in the history of the planet.»

The warming Arctic could add significant amounts of methane gas to the atmosphere as permafrost melts and releases huge quantities of gas trapped in previously frozen ground.

When fully burned, gas releases less CO2 than coal or oil, but currently huge amounts of methane are escaping unburned into the atmosphere.

Then there's coal, natural gas, cement production and the huge amounts of methane released by our farm animals as a result of our high protein diet.

RealClimate is wonderful, and an excellent source of reliable information.As I've said before, methane is an extremely dangerous component to global warming.Comment # 20 is correct.There is a sharp melting point to frozen methane.A huge increase in the release of methane could happen within the next 50 years.At what point in the Earth's temperature rise and the rise of co2 would a huge methane melt occur?No one has answered that definitive issue.If I ask you all at what point would huge amounts of extra methane start melting, i.e at what temperature rise of the ocean near the Artic methane ice deposits would the methane melt, or at what point in the rise of co2 concentrations in the atmosphere would the methane melt, I believe that no one could currently tell me the actual answer as to where the sharp melting point exists.Of course, once that tipping point has been reached, and billions of tons of methane outgass from what had been locked stores of methane, locked away for an eternity, it is exactly the same as the burning of stored fossil fuels which have been stored for an eternity as well.And even though methane does not have as long a life as co2, while it is around in the air it can cause other tipping points, i.e. permafrost melting, to arrive much sooner.I will reiterate what I've said before on this and other sites.Methane is a hugely underreported, underestimated risk.How about RealClimate attempts to model exactly what would happen to other tipping points, such as the melting permafrost, if indeed a huge increase in the melting of the methal hydrate ice WERE to occur within the next 50 years.My amateur guess is that the huge, albeit temporary, increase in methane over even three or four decades might push other relevent tipping points to arrive much, much, sooner than they normally would, thereby vastly incresing negative feedback mechanisms.We KNOW that quick, huge, changes occured in the Earth's climate in the past.See other relevent posts in the past from Realclimate.Climate often does not change slowly, but undergoes huge, quick, changes periodically, due to negative feedbacks accumulating, and tipping the climate to a quick change.Why should the danger from huge potential methane releases be vievwed with any less trepidation?

Perhaps more ominously yet, the possibility exists that thawing Arctic permafrost — known to contain huge amounts of carbon — could release large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.