Eruption of Methane plumes has been detected in the Pacific Ocean. Scientists are concerned about the melting of the freezing methane gas from a solid and into a gassy liquid. Frozen temperatures in the deep ocean have suddenly started bubbling up and have turned into methane plumes after staying inactive for thousands of years.

On October 14, E Science News reported that the University of Washington researchers have found the bubbling methane plumes along the Washington and Oregon coast. In the last 10 years, more than 160 bubble plumes have surfaced.

The gas is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. Methane has contributed to sudden swings in Earth's climate in the past.
It is unknown what role it might play in global warming today, but earlier research has found warming-related methane emissions in Arctic permafrost and off the Atlantic coast.
Of the 168 methane plumes in the new study, some 14 were located at the transition depth – more plumes per unit area than on surrounding parts of the Washington and Oregon seafloor.

Gizmodo reported that as per lead researcher H. Paul Johnson from the University of Washington, these plumes have ‘possibly not erupted from the seafloor sediments but due to decomposing frozen methane.

Another potential problem, he said, is the destabilisation of seafloor slopes where frozen methane acts as the glue that holds the steep sediment in place.
Methane deposits are abundant on the continental margin of the Pacific Northwest coast.

Ironically, what appears to be driving the transition is climate change itself. The activity was detected about a third of a mile below the ocean’s surface, which experiences warmer temperatures, researchers said.

So far there is no clarity about how much methane gas has reached the surface. Scientists explained that marine microbes consume a lot of deep-sea methane as they make their way.

In scientific terms, the report said, “These microbes convert the methane into carbon dioxide, which results in low-oxygen and acidic conditions in deeper offshore waters. From there, this tainted water trickles along the coast and makes its way into coastal waterways”.

The team examined 168 methane plumes over the past decade, concluding that subsurface warming is the cause of the methane’s release. The researchers’ findings are to be published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Just over 8 percent or 14 of the 168 plumes that Johnson and his co-authors looked at were located at the suspicious depth, but that was enough to make them look closer.

Scientists don’t have any idea regarding long-term effects of the methane gas, but they said it’s for sure not at all a good thing. As per them, the methane plumes are another sign of warming climate change.