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KILLER METHANE BURPS CAUSED MASSIVE GLOBAL WARMING
Innovations Report / Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
September 15, 2005

http://tinyurl.com/7n8o8

Researchers have uncovered new evidence of a sudden, fatal dose of global
warming 180 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs. The
scientists¹ findings, published in Nature, 14 September, could provide vital
clues about the climate change we are experiencing today.

PhD student Dave Kemp, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council,
and supervisors Drs. Angela Coe and Anthony Cohen from the Open University
Department of Earth Sciences, along with Dr. Lorenz Schwark of the
University of Cologne, discovered evidence suggesting that vast amounts of
methane gas were released to the atmosphere in three massive Œmethane burps¹
or pulses. The addition of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere had
a severe impact on the environment, warming Earth about 10°C, and resulting
in the extinction of a large number of species on land and in the oceans.

Dr Angela Coe says: ³We¹ve known about this event for a few years through
earlier work by our team and others, but there¹s been a great deal of
uncertainty about its precise size, duration, and underlying cause. What our
present study shows is that this methane release was not just one event, but
3 consecutive pulses that occurred within a 60,000 year interval.
Importantly, our data demonstrate that each individual pulse was very rapid.
Also, whilst the methane release was very quick, we¹ve found that the
recovery took much longer, occurring over a few hundred thousand years.²

The methane came from gas hydrate, a frozen mixture of water and methane
found in huge quantities on the seabed. This hydrate suddenly melted,
allowing the methane to escape. The OU researchers based their findings on
geochemical analyses of mudrocks that are preserved along the Yorkshire
coast near Whitby, UK, and date from the Jurassic Period of geological time.

Dave Kemp says: ³The methane was released because slight wobbles in the
Earth¹s orbit periodically bring our planet closer to the Sun, warming the
oceans sufficiently to melt the vast reserves of hydrate. We believe that
this effect was compounded by volcanic emissions of other greenhouse gases.
After the methane was released into the atmosphere from the seabed it
reacted rapidly with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also a
powerful greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for many hundreds of
years, and it was this gas which caused such a massive global warming
effect².

Dr Anthony Cohen adds: ³One of the most important aspects of the study is
that it provides an accurate timescale for how the Earth, and life, reacted
to a sudden increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Today we are releasing
large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, primarily through the
burning of fossil fuels. It is possible that the rate at which carbon
dioxide is being added to the atmosphere now actually outstrips the rate at
which it was added 180 million years ago. Given that the effects were so
devastating then, it is extremely important to understand the details of
past events in order to better comprehend present-day climate change. With
this information, we are better informed about what action needs to be taken
to mitigate or avoid some of the potential detrimental future effects.

More information:
http://www.nerc.ac.uk

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Published by David Sunfellow
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