Lurking beneath the studies of CO2 rise and predictions of a warming earth are other fears, about which we hear from time to time: methane release. The great Siberian permafrost tundra is thought to hold gigatons of methane, known also to readers of southern gothic or Victorian thrillers as “swamp gas.” Methane is also held in the crystal structure of water at certain depths and temperatures, called methane clathrates. If the temperature in either zone rises by as much as a few degrees the gas can escape into the air.

Methane (CH4) is some 30 times as potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. While its life in the atmosphere is shorter than that of CO2, it dies by combining with Oxygen to make CO2 and water. A new study of ancient geological strata by a team led by Martin Kennedy at U.C. Riverside finds that previous methane warming was likely responsible for the thawing of “snowball earth,” about 635 million years ago in an irreversible feedback loop, leading to the climate of the world as we have known it for thousands of years.

Kennedy’s fear is that another forcing led by more methane release will bring about global change much faster than is commonly held, within current life-times.

“Our findings document an abrupt and catastrophic means of global warming that abruptly led from a very cold, seemingly stable climate state to a very warm also stable climate state with no pause in between,” said Martin Kennedy, a professor of geology in the Department of Earth Sciences, who led the research team.

“This tells us about the mechanism, which exists, but is dormant today, as well as the rate of change,” he added. “What we now need to know is the sensitivity of the trigger: how much forcing does it take to move from one stable state to the other, and are we approaching something like that today with current carbon dioxide warming.”

“Unzippering the methane reservoir could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid. Such a violent, zipper-like opening of the clathrates could have triggered a catastrophic climate and biogeochemical reorganization of the ocean and atmosphere around 635 million years ago.”

Methane Release

The actual study can be found at Nature, for subscribers or those with spare change.