The team of Spanish scientists discovered " This gas is able to heat the planet about 30 times more than carbon dioxide (CO?

Geologists noticed in the ocean of the methane column with a length of up to 700 meters and up to 70 meters wide. These unknown emissions can become a "

Expedition leaders, geologists Ricardo Leon and Roger Urgeles, who conducted research on board the Sarmieento de Gamboa vessel that they discovered exactly what they were afraid of. Scientists went sailing in search of these massive, then still hypothetical, origins.

They confirmed that the connection accumulated on the seabed about 20,000 years ago as a result of decomposition of organic substances in the form of methane hydrates, crystalline solids.

“It's like an ice that can be set fire to, and it will burn,” Roger Urgeles explained a geologist from the Institute of Marines in Barcelona.

The theory was that the thinning of the huge Antarctic glacial shield, which began at the end of the last ice age, entails a decrease in the weight of the land and raising the continent. And this phenomenon, known as a post -willed rebound, contributes to the release of methane ice hidden by millennia in the underwater day.

Researchers were looking for the origins on the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the regions of the planet, the most affected by global warming, where the temperature increased by more than three degrees Celsius in just half a century.

“We calculated that about 24 carbon gigatons in methane hydrates have accumulated in this area, which is equivalent to the quantity that all humanity throws up in two years,” Urgeles warned.

It is dangerous that frozen, solid methane turns into gas. "

Preliminary research results indicate that gas is breaking out from under the ground along the faults, often due to mud volcanoes at an altitude of hundreds of meters above the seabed.

Scientists note that methane ice hydrates are stable at low temperatures and high pressure, but with warming the ocean and a decrease in sea weight-due to the raising of the Antarctic continent-they are destabilized and the gas breaks out.

Methane loops observed by researchers dissolve about 150 meters from the ocean surface. The future analysis of the samples will show to what extent the gas enters the atmosphere.

Geologists Ricardo Leon and Roger Urgeles warn of another threat. The instability of marine deposits can lead to huge landslides of the continental slope, which can lead to tsunami.

" If it does not dissipate quickly, then it can entail huge landslides, such as the shift of the Storegg in the Arctic, ”Urgeles emphasized.

The researcher gives an example of the largest of the well -known submarine landslides - a movement that entailed the tsunami, which swept along the coast of Northern Europe about 8,150 years ago.

The height of the waves then reached 20 meters on the Sheneta islands of modern Scotland, but the geological traces of disaster can still be found along the entire coast of Norway, Denmark and even in Greenland, scientists say.