Where does the methane come from?

[ image July 29, 2013. Click on image to enlarge ]

Wildfires are still raging, sending huge amounts of smoke into the sky. Worryingly, much black carbon that comes with this smoke gets deposited at high latitudes, discoloring snow and ice, and thus speeding up the melt.

A lot of methane has been emitted over the last few days, and much appears to be due to wildfires, as illustrated by the image below, picturing the situation on July 31, 2013, p.m.

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Above image shows some methane on the right, over the Atlantic Ocean, which appears to originate from these wildfires and is visible in that location due to the Coriolis effect. The image below, picturing the situation on August 1, 2013, p.m., shows a lot of methane over Russia and elsewhere in Europe and Asia. Again, the methane on the left of Europe appears to originate from wildfires in North America.

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High levels of methane are recorded in many places on the Northern Hemisphere, and there is also a lot over the Southern Hemisphere, as illustrated by the image below.

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Where did the methane over the oceans on the Southern Hemisphere come from? It appears that it originates from hydrates under the ocean floor. For more about methane hydrates, also see the methane-hydrates blog.