Northern Siberia’s thaw lakes are belching out up to five times as much methane as previously thought. And as global warming causes the permafrost to melt, lakes worldwide could emit even more methane, reinforcing climate change.
Katey Walter at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and her colleagues developed a new technique to measure the amount of methane bubbling out of two lakes in northern Siberia. In autumn, when the lakes froze over, they identified regions where methane was being released by searching for gas bubbles pushing through the ice. They then placed umbrella-shaped bubble traps over the hotspots and measured…
