Environment Counts | Evidence that thawing submarine permafrost is releasing significant quantities of methane :
Vast quantities of carbon are stored in shallow Arctic reservoirs, such as submarine and terrestrial permafrost. This article presents data on the temperature of submarine permafrost on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf using measurements collected from a sediment core, together with sonar-derived observations of bubble flux and measurements of seawater methane levels taken from the same region.
East Siberian study area and seepage
It is estimated that bubbles escaping the partially thawed permafrost inject 100–630 mg methane per square meter per day into the overlying water column. It is suggested that 17 Tg of methane (17 million tonnes) could be escaping the East Siberian Shelf annually as a result of the degradation of submarine permafrost over thousands of years. Storms cause a significant amount of the dissolved methane to be released into the atmosphere. Nature Geoscience 7, 64–70 (2014) doi:10.1038/ngeo2007
