#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The carbon storages are very sensitive to climate change – warming. As a result, the melting of the frozen sea shelf is releasing large volumes of methane and carbon dioxide and is also destroying natural gas deposits.
“The permafrost of the tundra and taiga is melting slowly, and its average temperature is minus 10 degrees. Marine permafrost on the shelf of the Arctic Ocean is in a transitional state with a temperature of minus 1 degree, and the coastal permafrost is currently being destroyed by warming and the action of waves”, Igor Semiletov, head of the Arctic Research Laboratory of the Pacific Oceanological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Far Eastern Branch, quotes TASS.
According to him, in Eastern Siberia, warming and the release of greenhouse gases are happening the fastest, and, according to scientists, by 2100, the average annual temperature in the East Siberian Sea will increase by more than five degrees, which may lead to the release of methane deposits.
“Lack of understanding of this process creates one of the greatest uncertainties for climate researchers. The East Siberian shelf is a significant source of methane emissions into the atmosphere, since permafrost is a cover that closes deposits of gas hydrates and methane”, the scientist explained.
Recall that in 2020, an International Expedition took place on the Academik Mstislav Keldysh research vessel in the seas of the Eastern Arctic and the Kara Sea. During the expedition, Russian scientists discovered powerful methane effluents (seeps), which are the reason for the increased content of this gas over the Arctic regions, as well as entire seep fields.
Later, The Guardian reported that an international team of scientists recorded high levels of methane in the Laptev Sea at a depth of 350 meters. Most of the sediments dissolve in water, but the volume of gas on the surface exceeds the norm by four to eight times.
Text: Ekaterina Elkanova, Photo: open sources