Research project IGV| Melting marine gas hydrates – Predicting seafloor methane gas release in a warming world

Concerns over future release of CH4 to the atmosphere exist because marine hydrates are susceptible to melting via ocean warming. IPCC AR5 states that if climate warming continues, melting hydrates can lead to an irreversible runaway climate warming feedback. In a Nature 2013 article, the global price tag from gas hydrate melting over the next 50 years has been estimated to be comparable to the size of the present world economy. These estimates have been criticized, however, and the controversy indicates a knowledge gap in our understanding of the dynamic response of the hydrate reservoir to climate change, and highlights the complexity of the problem. At the heart of this debate lies the poorly constrained potential methane release from marine hydrate deposits. Existing global scale estimates of future methane release neglect critical processes. Building on our previous work in developing a hydrate system model that incorporates all relevant processes, this project aims at making a new benchmark global estimate of future seafloor CH4 escape.