Watch Out Cows -- The Siberian Shelf Makes a Lot of Methane, Too

Over the last couple weeks, the climate blogosphere has been lighting up over a recent report that enormous plumes of methane are bubbling to the surface off the coast of eastern Siberia in Russia. (Original article in the Independent online.)

So, what does this mean? It's a lot of methane, to be sure. The discovery was first made in 2010 and estimated at over 7 million tons (roughly equivalent to the methane emissions from the rest of the whole ocean). Now scientists report even more methane coming up, in plumes over a kilometer wide, although they aren't estimating exactly how much more yet.

One of the researchers described the plumes in the Independent as "continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures." I'm imagining a loose strand of gas bubbles rising up through the ocean to the surface, more like scuba...READ MORE