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Methane emissions discovered in Arctic Ocean

Russian scientists have discovered spots in the Arctic Ocean where mass emissions of methane can be observed.

According to the press-service of the expedition aboard The Viktor Buinitsky research vessel, the diameter of some of the ‘methane fields’ found in the northern part of the Laptev Sea exceeds 1 kilometre.The new discoveries will help to understand the mechanism of global warming on Earth, experts believe. In their opinion, emissions of methane could have catastrophic consequences for the climate of our planet.

Source: Methane emissions discovered in Arctic Ocean, in: Voice of Russia

Summer sea ice in Arctic 'is facing meltdown'

Arctic summer sea ice could disappear in as little as two years, a Cambridge professor believes.

Peter Wadhams, Professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, said the Arctic was warming up so quickly its entire summer ice cover was “now on the point of collapse”.

He predicted it would be gone by 2015, if not sooner, because of the loss of albedo – the amount of the sun’s energy reflected back into space – and the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the ocean floor.

He said: “The Arctic is warming up three to four times as fast as the rest of the world. The sea ice grows less thick in winter, and melts more in summer . . . the entire ice cover is now on the point of collapse.

“The extra open water already created by the retreating ice allows bigger waves to be generated by storms, which are sweeping away the surviving ice. It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015.”

His predictions follow satellite data released on Sunday which showed Arctic sea ice had melted to a new record low level of cover.

The ice blanket shrank to 1.58 million square miles, 27,000 square miles less than the previous melt record set on September 18, 2007.

Source: Summer sea ice in Arctic 'is facing meltdown', in: Cambridge-news.co.uk