Researcher Slawek Tulaczyk of the University of California at Santa Barbara described how methane formed. She said some of the organic material became trapped in material that had fallen to the bottom. She said these sediments, in her words, were then “cut off from the rest of the world when the ice sheet grew.”
The scientists say fifty percent of the West Antarctic ice sheet and twenty-five percent of the East Antarctic sheet are on sedimentary basins. They said these areas hold about twenty one billion tons of carbon.
BOB DOUGHTY: The Antarctic Ice Sheet covers land, but not the surrounding sea. Methane hydrates are also found at the bottom of oceans.
Earlier this year, news about methane gas came from the opposite end of the world. Researchers reported finding thousands of places in the Arctic where the gas was rising to the surface.
Studies on the ground and from the air found one hundred fifty thousand seeps -- places in Alaska and Greenland where methane had escaped. The seeps were found in lakes along the edges of ice cover.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The study appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience. It showed that some of the seeps are freeing ancient methane. The source may be natural gas or coal deposits beneath the lakes.
Other seeps release more recently formed gas. The newer methane may have formed when plant material in the lakes broke down into basic elements.
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