“We are playing with fire. It highlights the urgency for action”

The iC3 centre reports that meltwater running off glaciers on Svalbard is helping old methane escape from deep in the bedrock into the air. Scientists in Norway have observed this for the first time, the centre says. The Barents Observer spoke with two iC3 researchers from UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Dr Gabrielle Kleber and Leonard Magerl. They spent nine months living in a remote cabin while studying one glacier.

The researchers said the Arctic has many small valley glaciers, with 1,400 of them in Svalbard alone. They said the capacity of these glaciers to release methane had been overlooked. Earlier, only large ice sheets were thought to move large amounts of methane through rivers. Kleber said the glacier in the study is 3% of the size of the previously studied part of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Its estimated emissions are up to 36% of that part's. A video caption shows methane rising from vents in groundwater pools below the Vallåkrabreen glacier.

On Svalbard the methane is about 250 million years old, whereas in Greenland it is thousands of years old. It is the same kind of gas the oil and gas industry uses. Kleber gave an estimate of up to 21,000 Pg of carbon for the Svalbard methane reservoir, against about 780 Pg in the atmosphere now. Methane's warming potential over 20 years is 84 times that of CO 2, the Barents Observer reported. Methane has driven around 30% of the present rise in global temperatures, it added. Kleber said methane lasts about 10 years in the air before turning into carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide remains for up to 1000 years.

Kleber said the release mechanism is a result of global warming, so carbon may keep escaping even if human emissions fall. She said it is not known when these natural systems will pass a tipping point. The researchers describe a vicious circle, and experts say oil and gas emissions drive the emissions from Svalbard's rivers. Asked what could reduce the release, Kleber said it can only be slowed, together with other sources such as permafrost, through drastic cuts in human-made emissions.