From Oregon State University – Scientists discover carbonate rocks are unrecognized methane sink
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Since the first undersea methane seep was discovered 30 years ago, scientists have meticulously analyzed and measured how microbes in the seafloor sediments consume the greenhouse gas methane as part of understanding how the Earth works.
The sediment-based microbes form an important methane “sink,” preventing much of the chemical from reaching the atmosphere and contributing to greenhouse gas accumulation. As a byproduct of this process, the microbes create a type of rock known as authigenic carbonate, which while interesting to scientists was not thought to be involved in the processing of methane.
That is no longer the case. A team of scientists has discovered that these authigenic carbonate rocks also contain vast amounts of active microbes that take up methane. The results of their study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, were reported today in the journal Nature Communications.
“No one had really examined these rocks as living habitats before,” noted Andrew Thurber, an Oregon State University marine ecologist and co-author on the paper. “It was just assumed that they were inactive. In previous studies, we had seen remnants of microbes in the rocks – DNA and lipids – but we thought they were relics of past activity. We didn’t know they were active.
“This goes to show how the global methane process is still rather poorly understood,” Thurber added.
Lead author Jeffrey Marlow of the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues studied samples from authigenic compounds off the coasts of the Pacific Northwest (Hydrate Ridge), northern California (Eel River Basin) and central America (the Costa Rica margin). The rocks range in size and distribution from small pebbles to carbonate “pavement” stretching dozens of square miles.
“Methane-derived carbonates represent a large volume within many seep systems and finding active methane-consuming archaea and bacteria in the interior of these carbonate rocks extends the known habitat for methane-consuming microorganisms beyond the relatively thin layer of sediment that may overlay a carbonate mound,” said Marlow, a geobiology graduate student in the lab of Victoria Orphan of Caltech.
These assemblages are also found in the Gulf of Mexico as well as off Chile, New Zealand, Africa, Europe – “and pretty much every ocean basin in the world,” noted Thurber, an assistant professor (senior research) in Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
The study is important, scientists say, because the rock-based microbes potentially may consume a huge amount of methane. The microbes were less active than those found in the sediment, but were more abundant – and the areas they inhabit are extensive, making their importance potential enormous. Studies have found that approximately 3-6 percent of the methane in the atmosphere is from marine sources – and this number is so low due to microbes in the ocean sediments consuming some 60-90 percent of the methane that would otherwise escape.
Now those ratios will have to be re-examined to determine how much of the methane sink can be attributed to microbes in rocks versus those in sediments. The distinction is important, the researchers say, because it is an unrecognized sink for a potentially very important greenhouse gas.
“We found that these carbonate rocks located in areas of active methane seeps are themselves more active,” Thurber said. “Rocks located in comparatively inactive regions had little microbial activity. However, they can quickly activate when methane becomes available.
“In some ways, these rocks are like armies waiting in the wings to be called upon when needed to absorb methane.”
The ocean contains vast amounts of methane, which has long been a concern to scientists. Marine reservoirs of methane are estimated to total more than 455 gigatons and may be as much as 10,000 gigatons carbon in methane. A gigaton is approximate 1.1 billion tons.
By contrast, all of the planet’s gas and oil deposits are thought to total about 200-300 gigatons of carbon.
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Got the new, will add to IPCC graph by hand.
IPCC has obviously overstated the amount of methane freed to the atmosphere or overstated the length of time that it takes methane to degrade in the atmosphere.
The US EPA methane budget is erroneously listing US upland soil as a 30TG sink. Soil is not a sink for atmospheric methane.
This article says there is uptake of methane http://www.biogeosciences.net/10/3205/2013/bg-10-3205-2013.pdf . With the biased and political minds in the IPCC nothing they say can be relied on. In fact normally the truth is the opposite of what IPCC and Greens say.
Methane does not degrade in the atmosphere other than a small amount by ozone from lightning. Methane is absorbed to a small extent by the oceans, soil and plants.
Methane is not a so called greenhouse gas. That is a straight out exaggeration by the IPCC and some green liars.- see this http://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/methane-good-or-bad/
Reblogged this on JunkScience.com and commented:
From the Settled Science Department
Ah, the acrid smell of settled science in the morning…
..one of these days they are going to discover that life on this planet needs carbon
until then it’s just rocks
From the headline post;
“The ocean contains vast amounts of methane, which has long been a concern to scientists”
“has long been of a “concern” to scientists.
The “messiah” complex is so blatantly obvious in this comment.
The “scientists”, the :”saviors of the planet” have been “concerned” about a gas that has been around in vast quantities in the oceans for the 3.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence.
If as scientists they were extremely “interested” as to the role and effects of methane and any thing associated with methane in the ocean, that makes complete sense.
But to be “concerned” puts a completely different construct on the statement.
It suggests that those scientists believe they have the ability to change the Earth’s methane levels if they could figure out how to do it.
And it indicates the highly elevated opinion these scientists must have of their own importance and their ability to change the levels of global methane and therefore supposedly the climate.
The “catastrophism” that is the defining characteristic of most CAGW research and the Climate Catastrophe ideology is also highly evident here.
There is little rejoicing in finding a new niche that is swarming with formerly unknown bacterial life not previously known to science and all due entirely to a very prolific deep ocean food source, that of methane.
Instead there is a wiping of the brows that maybe this methane consuming bacterial life might stop the earth from suffering still another form of melt down, a melt down due of course entirely to mankind’s sinfulness against the planet by using fossil fuels and even his considering of exploiting the ocean methane for that fuel source.
Seems mankind was beaten to it yet again by the bacteria.
There appears to be no attempt here to look at methane as a highly beneficial product instead of a dangerous gas which in the overheated imagination of some climate scientists will spell the end of planetary life.
This usual catastrophic climate science meme is presented in this paper instead of regarding copious deep ocean methane as a highly beneficial food source for untold numbers of bacterial life with quite possibly still to be discovered, highly beneficial effects on the rest of the planet’s life systems.
_______________
I have been a science supporter all my life but regretfully and sadly, something that climate catastrophe science has instilled in me, is my unfortunate and increasing tendency to look at the statements of science and scientists today in a way that sees them increasingly as smug, self satisfied elites who are now constantly preaching down to us mere lesser mortals on how we should each be running our lives along the increasingly implausible and nonsensical principles they are proposing and demanding for rest of society.
All the while excluding themselves from any of their proposed societal and personal strictures of course.
My disillusionment with large sectors of so called science, science which is becoming more and more authoritarian in it’s pronunciations is becoming something I deeply regret.
ROM: These are the “Ban Ki Moon and Naomi Klein approved scientists” who are obviously superior beings to those other scientists that are sceptical of CAGW. Although sceptical scientists (like myself) are very large in number, there is a weighting factor that consigns them to 3%. The worthiness quotient applied to the “Ban Ki Moon and Naomi Klein approved scientists” inflates them to 97%.
Have you got that? /sarc.
ROM-> I’m right there with you. The sheen has come off the armour that science once held for me.
The case of the Exxon Valdez is interesting. A study was conducted a few years afterward and the result came back that the area had NOT returned to “normal”. That was proclaimed far and wide by the Watermelons.
The reason was that there was “too much” life measured. The spilled hydrocarbons had provided a free meal for the consuming bacteria bloomed; providing lots of food for the plants and animals up the next step of the food chain. In turn they fed the next step up the food chain, etc.
Proving that these clowns have an agenda to want to rule, no matter the result.
Can anyone give a link to this study??
Possibly this: Criteria for Oil Spill Recovery: A Case Study of the Intertidal Community of Prince William Sound, Alaska, Following the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
In summary, where there is more methane, there is biologic activity. Who would have thought? /sarc
Oh – and when there is more CO2, there is more biologic activity (plants)… and we need to kill off the plant food, because plants are a sign of too much… oh wait… forget it.
Readers who are supposing that the methane in these rocks will satisfy human needs for fuel in our lifetimes should ask “How much methane can be extracted per ton of rocks and how much it would cost to transport the rocks to a extraction facility.” I suspect the yield is rather low. The atmosphere contains about 1.75 parts per million. What’s the concentration of methane in the ocean? The bacteria are apparently able to concentrate the methane from a rather dilute solution. The oceans are big, they contain a lot of Gold too, but it’s too dilute to recover at a profit. Also consider the political ramifications–for instance “Google” manganese nodules. Despite the nodules being a rather concentrated “metallic ore” readily available on the ocean floor, Kennecott decided they were not worth their cost. The Google article suggested that any commercialization of the manganese nodules was at least two decades away.
Now the bacteria may be more valuable.
The models could be right and the observations fail to consider how a lot of methane is hiding.