Worries about melting permafrost in Siberia were justified, and it's worse than anyone expected. Plumes of methane gas, perhaps thousands of them, are emerging all through the region.
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr (Igor) Semiletov (Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."
Methane is "a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide." The future is not going to be pleasant.
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