October 28th, 2006
Methane released into the atmosphere from under-sea volcanoes contribute to abrupt climate change. This is because methane is a more effective Green House Gas (GHG) than Carbon Dioxide. So the higher the incidence of methane release into the atmosphere, the closer we are to big, global, trouble.
A recent study led by a Franco-German team from the Max Planck Institute for marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany found three communities of single-celled organisms around the Haakon Mosby mud volcano at the south end of the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen. The Haakon Mosby volcano is one kilometer across and found all along the area are microbines that the study found to be cleaning up at most 40 percent of the methane emitted by the volcano! More research will soon be underway.