Large reservoirs of “fire ice” beneath the ocean can potentially trigger devastating disasters if released
02/28/2020 / By Michael Alexander
Locked deep beneath our oceans, according to scientists, are deposits of frozen methane.
Dubbed “fire ice,” these deposits, once released, can trigger large-scale natural catastrophes such as tsunamis and landslides – and scientists and experts currently have no idea how much of these fire ice deposits exist.
According to Ann Cook, an associate professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University, the lack of information about this phenomenon is due to the fact that frozen methane takes many more forms than what was previously thought.
A song of fire and ice
Also known as methane hydrate, fire ice – which is also thought to contain up to 40 percent of the Earth’s total carbon deposits, or up to 10,000 gigatons – is a crystalline solid that forms at low temperatures and under high pressure, and is made up of methane gas molecules encased in ice. Due to its unique properties, fire ice only occurs naturally in subsurface deposits where temperature and pressure conditions are favorable for its formation, such as the Arctic permafrost, beneath Antarctic ice and in sedimentary deposits along continental margins.
https://www.climate.news/2020-02-28-large-reservoirs-of-fire-ice-can-trigger-disasters.html
