Impact of tides and sea-level on deep-sea Arctic methane emissions

Nabil Sultan (), Andreia Plaza-Faverola, Sunil Vadakkepuliyambatta, Stefan Buenz and Jochen Knies
Additional contact information
Nabil Sultan: Unité des Géosciences Marines
Andreia Plaza-Faverola: UiT-The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø
Sunil Vadakkepuliyambatta: UiT-The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø
Stefan Buenz: UiT-The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø
Jochen Knies: UiT-The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Sub-sea Arctic methane and gas hydrate reservoirs are expected to be severely impacted by ocean temperature increase and sea-level rise. Our understanding of the gas emission phenomenon in the Arctic is however partial, especially in deep environments where the access is difficult and hydro-acoustic surveys are sporadic. Here, we report on the first continuous pore-pressure and temperature measurements over 4 days in shallow sediments along the west-Svalbard margin. Our data from sites where gas emissions have not been previously identified in hydro-acoustic profiles show that tides significantly affect the intensity and periodicity of gas emissions. These observations imply that the quantification of present-day gas emissions in the Arctic may be underestimated. High tides, however, seem to influence gas emissions by reducing their height and volume. Hence, the question remains as to whether sea-level rise may partially counterbalance the potential threat of submarine gas emissions caused by a warmer Arctic Ocean.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18899-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18899-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18899-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().