Russian scientists are baffled after finding plumes of methane in the Arctic Ocean. The scale and volume of the methane was a huge surprise to the researchers.
The team was doing research in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in the Laptev Sea. The methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, was released from the Arctic seabed.
Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane.
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said in the Independent.
"I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."