Scientists monitor “huge emissions” in the Antarctica

A team of Spanish scientists, who explore the sea floor on the Antarctica, discovered “huge emissions” of “methane gas”, which is a gas that has the ability to heat the planet by about 30 times over carbon dioxide, and the researchers noticed on the ship “Sarmino de Gamboa »pillars of methane gas in the ocean up to 700 meters in length, and 70 meters wide, according to For geologists, Ricardo Leon, Oujar Orgelis, leaders of the mission, these unknown emissions may represent a possible “environmental bomb” for the planet’s climate.

What they discovered is exactly what they were afraid, and the scientists sailed, on January 12, in search of this huge leakage, but at that time it is still “default”, and the accumulation of gas at the sea floor for about 20 thousand years, by decomposing organic matter in the form of ” Methane Hydida », which is a solid crystal material.

“It is like ice that you can ignite and burns,” said Roger Orgelis, from the Barcelona -based sea science On the continent, and this phenomenon known as “the apostasy after the ice”, it explains the leakage of the frozen “methane” hidden for thousands of years at the bottom. the sea.

The researchers searched for leaks on the edges of the Antarctica, one of the areas most affected by global global warming, with a high temperature with more than three degrees in just half a century.

“We have estimated that in this area there are about 24 gigabytes of carbon accumulated in (methane hydrate), which is equivalent to what is emitted by the entire humanity in two years.”

The frozen “methane” turns into “methane gas”.

“These phenomena have already been recorded in the Arctic, but this is the first time that they have been discovered in the Antarctica,” said Ricardo Leon, of the Geological and Mining Institute in Spain.

His team met with journalists on the island of “King George” on the Antarctic continent on the eighth of February, the day they ended their exploratory journey, and their results, which are still very primary, indicate that the gas is escalating from the ground along the rifts, often through clay volcanoes Hundreds of meters above the sea floor.

The Sarmino de Jampoa research ship, which is affiliated with the Spanish National Research Council, was roaming the dangerous Antarctic Sea for about a month, as it took samples of water and sediments, and conducted X -ray checks on the ground.

And methane hydrate, similar to ice, is stable at low temperatures and high pressure, but with the high temperature of the ocean and the low weight of the sea, due to the high land mass in the Antarctic continent, it becomes unstable and vowed to leakage.

The “methane” pillars, which were monitored by the researchers, are about 150 meters from the surface of the ocean, and future analyzes of the samples will be revealed, to what extent does the gas proceed in the atmosphere.

Geology, Lyon, and Orgelis warned against another threat, as the instability of marine sediments can cause huge landslides on the continental slope, with the possibility of generating tsunami.

“When (methane hydrate) turns into a gas, it occupies about 160 times larger, and if it does not dissipate quickly, it may cause huge landslides, such as the collapse of (Sturga) in the Arctic,” in reference to the largest known landslide collapse. Underwater, which caused a tsunami that destroyed the coast of northern Europe about 8150 years ago.

The height of the waves reached 20 meters in the “Chitland” Islands in the current Scotland, but the geological effects of the natural disaster are still present along the Norwegian coast, in Denmark and even in Greenland, and Leon warns: “The collapse of (Sturga) was a similar size for the size of southern Spain, and coincided with Longs for a major climatic change on the ground. ”Given the timing of the earthly collapse, it has One of the reasons is that these changes caused the disintegration of (methane hydrate), and led to a huge landslide. ” About “El Pais”

. As ocean temperature rises, “methane hydrate” becomes unstable and vowed to leakage.