Methane discharge 'cracking permafrost' in Arctic

Methane discharges are cracking open the permafrost in the Arctic, a scientific expedition has revealed.

The Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia has been studying the changes in the Arctic Shelf environment.

This year, with a team of 69 scientists from 10 countries, their expedition found that methane discharge was increasing along the East Siberian Arctic Ocean Shelf, the Siberian Times has reported.

Expedition head Professor Igor Semiletov said all areas of methane discharge had increased – and that new sea bottom craters in the Laprev Sea had been found.

"They look like holes in the permafrost and, as our studies showed, they were formed by massive methane discharge," he told the Times.

The expedition said that at this point, the increased methane emission had not contributed to an increase in global atmospheric methane levels.

A rise in methane and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in the 20^th and 21^st centuries has been named a central cause for climate change.

Methane traps heat much more effectively than carbon dioxide.