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Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an "astonishing rate," scientists have found, raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been underestimated.
Huge amounts of methane lie in reservoirs that have formed over millennia beneath the seafloor around the world. This invisible, climate-polluting gas can escape into the water through fissures in the sea floor, often revealing itself with a stream of bubbles weaving their way up to the ocean surface.
Relatively little is known about these underwater seeps, how they work, how many there are, and how much methane reaches the atmosphere versus how much is eaten by methane-munching microbes living beneath the ocean. But scientists are keen to better understand them, as this super-polluting gas traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.
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🎥 : Leigh Tate, Earth Sciences New Zealand
