Climate change could be accelerated by methane time bomb

By Heidi Blake Published: 8:35AM GMT twenty-two February 2010

Vast amounts of methane trapped in the Arctic tundra could be expelled as the ice melts Photo: EPA

Atmospheric levels of the hothouse gas, that is as most as 60 times some-more manly than CO dioxide, crop up to have risen significantly for the past 3 years running, scientists say.

Experts have prolonged feared that immeasurable amounts of the healthy gas trapped in the solidified tundra of the Arctic could be unbarred as the permafrost is melted by rising temperatures, triggering a "methane time bomb" that could means temperatures to soar.

Met Office urges extreme hothouse gas cuts Methane expelled in the Arctic could lift tellurian temperatures Melting permafrost could trigger unstoppable meridian shift Astronomer devises hulk object defense to retreat tellurian warming Climate shift will be some-more harmful than predicted, tip scientist warns

More melting of the Arctic ice caused by accelerating warming would recover serve gases, environment off a "feedback" resource that could send meridian shift spinning out of control.

Methane (CH4) traps solar feverishness in the earths ambience even some-more effectively than CO2, that has been the concentration of meridian shift fears for decades. Scientists hold it could means 60 times some-more warming than CO over a duration of twenty years, though it additionally decays some-more quickly.

Atmospheric methane levels began rising in 2007, when an Arctic heatwave caused sea ice to cringe significantly. Now new rough formula indicate levels have one after another to climb by 2008 and 2009.

The new total will be disclosed this sunrise at the begin of a two-day discussion on hothouse gases at the Royal Society in London.

Professor Euan Nisbet, of Royal Holloway College of the University of London, and Dr Ed Dlugokencky of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder Colorado, will set out their commentary in a display on "Global windy methane in 2010: budget, changes and dangers".

After a decade of near-zero expansion in methane levels, the dual scientists will exhibit that: "globally averaged windy methane increasing by [approximately] 7 ppb (parts per billion) per year during 2007 and 2008."

They will go on: "During the initial half of 2009, globally averaged windy CH4 was [approximately] 7 ppb larger than it was in 2008, suggesting that the enlarge will go on in 2009. There is the intensity for increasing CH4 emissions from clever certain meridian feedbacks in the Arctic where there are inconstant stores of CO in permafrost ... so the causes of these new increases contingency be understood."

Professor Nisbet told The Independent at the week end that the new total did not indispensably symbol a depart from the trend. "It might only be a integrate of years of high growth, and it might dump behind to what it was," he said. "But there is a regard that things are commencement to shift towards renewed expansion from feedbacks."