Weather Channel — Vast methane plumes spotted bubbling up from the Arctic Ocean floor

An international team of scientists, who are studying the vast deposits of methane trapped on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, have captured their first look at plumes of this powerful greenhouse gas bubbling up through water. This discovery could lead to better forecasting, but it also has serious implications for Earth's climate in the years to come. 

Much of the science of global warming has been focused on the study of carbon dioxide (CO2) as the main culprit in the current trend of rising global temperatures and resulting climate disruption we're seeing today. This is only appropriate, since CO2 is, by far, the largest contributor to the problem - at least by total amount of gas that's added to the atmosphere on a yearly basis. However, methane (chemical formula CH4) is another greenhouse gas that's been 'on the radar' for climate scientists, because it is much better than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere. Over a 20 year span of time, kg for kg, methane traps over 85 times more heat than carbon dioxide. Over a 100 year period, that ratio drops, but even averaged over that long methane is still over 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane is only a small contributor to the overall climate change we're seeing now, but there are fears that this could change in the years to come...

The Weather Channel
Vast methane plumes spotted bubbling up from the Arctic Ocean floor
Scott Sutherland | Meteorologist, theweathernetwork.com