The release of buried methane may have less effect than expected

2020/02/20 Gallego Moya, Juanma - Kazetaria Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ingurumena
• Klima

The release of methane, collected both in the permafrado and under the ice layers, will not have as much influence as is now believed in climate change, as proposed in a study published in the journal Science. Among experts, there is an ancestral concern about the impact that this old methane can have on climate change. As for the greenhouse effect, and seen for 100 years, methane is 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide. According to forecasts, as temperatures increase, this buried methane will be released more easily, which will strengthen global warming by starting a feedback. Now, a group of scientists have studied about 18,000-8,000 years ago, at the end of the last glaciation and early Holocene, methane collected in the air bubbles of the Antarctic ice. It has been concluded that most of the methane present in the atmosphere of the time was poured at that time through the decomposition of matter and the combustion of organic material. The old methane accumulated long ago was much more scarce in the atmosphere of then. According to these scientists, this situation can be comparable to the current one.