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Climate change shown to cause methane to be released from the deep ocean

ScienceDaily · last updated

New research has shown that fire-ice — frozen methane which is trapped as a solid under our oceans — is vulnerable to melting due to climate change and could be released into the sea.

Related Knowledge Center: Climate science

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What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet. 

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Related Knowledge Center: Climate: oceans

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Ocean and coastal impacts of climate change. 

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Related Knowledge Center: Methane

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As the production of natural gas from shale fields has expanded, so have methane emissions. U.S. methane emissions grew 27 percent from 1990 to 2009, according to the Energy Information Administration. Methane contributes about 10 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. 

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