Methanotrophs Disturbed By Sea Waves in Restricting The Entry Of Green House Gas In Atmosphere

Methanotrophs Disturbed By Sea Waves in Restricting The Entry Of Green House Gas In Atmosphere

Overview

  • Post By : Kumar Jeetendra

  • Source: CAGE Centre for,Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate

  • Date: 04 May,2015

According to recent study by the scientists of CAGE,Methanotrophs(Methane eating Bacteria) can not work properly under ocean waves so most of them unable to stop entering of green house gases in the atmosphere.

According to study,Bacteria that feed on methane can control its concentration once it is released from the ocean floor. This can potentially stop the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere. But ocean currents can easily disturb dinner, according to new study in Nature Geoscience.

There is a large, and relatively poorly understood, community of methane-consuming bacteria in this environment. They gorge on the gas, control its concentration in the ocean, and stop it from reaching the ocean surface and released into the atmosphere.

In the atmosphere methane is a much more potent climate gas than CO2 and it can amplify current global warming.However, a new study published in Nature Geoscience shows that ocean currents can have a strong impact on this bacterial methane filter.Oceanographer Benedicte Férré, who is a team leader at CAGE, is a co-author of the study. It shows that the level of activity of the methane-consuming bacteria varied drastically over very short time spans.

The international team of scientists behind this study was able to detect that the fluctuations in bacterial communities changed at the whim of the West Spitsbergen Current that carries warm water from Norwegian Sea to Arctic Ocean. Important oceanographic factors such as water temperature and salinity changed.

The warm and salty current swept over the methane seeping sites, and carried bacteria communities away, thus disturbing methane filtration processes.This bacteria filter could become even more important in the future, because environmental change can cause bottom water warming in the Arctic Ocean.As a consequence methane rich gas hydrates in the ocean floor dissociate, and release even more gas to the water column. This could increase food supply for bacteria. But whether bacteria are able to consume the methane depends on ocean current dynamics as documented by Ferre and her team.

Note: For more information go through original story source.

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