Earthquakes Contribute to Global Warming by Releasing Methane from the Seabed

If it's not one thing, it's another. Scientists have now pinpointed another cause of global warming: earthquakes that shake up the seabed.

European researchers looking at an earthquake that rocked Pakistan 70 years ago concluded that the resulting seismic activity ended up releasing a large amount of methane that had been trapped in underwater sediment. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and can contribute significantly to rising temperatures.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Methane is trapped under the sea floor by gas hydrates, which are special chemicals that methane can form into under the right conditions. When the team of researchers looked at sediment cores from two locations in the northern Arabian Sea, they found that methane seepage had increased greatly halfway through the 20th century, leading them to believe it was because of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that afflicted Pakistan in 1945.

"The quake broke open gas-hydrate sediments and the free gas underneath migrated to the surface," explained lead author of the study David Fischer from the University of Bremen in Germany in a New York Times article.

The scientists are hoping the findings will prompt a more wholistic approach to dealing with climate change — it's not just human-induced emissions that are plaguing our planet.

"We therefore suggest that hydrocarbon seepage triggered by earthquakes needs to be considered in local and global carbon budgets at active continental margins," concludes the study abstract.

This isn't the first time methane has made the news recently. A study not too long ago claimed that the Arctic could "burp" enough methane to cause $60 trillion worth of environmentally related damages over the next 30 years.