What bubbles beneath – Beautiful patterns of frozen bubbles trapped in Canada lake are highly flammable methane gas
Like clouds perched in the sky on a windless day, the white and billowy bubbles in the frozen blue waters of Alberta, Canada’s Abraham Lake are as picturesque as a scene on Earth can get.
But they are hiding a dangerous secret.
These buoyant bubbles aren’t air, they’re methane and they’re trapped inside the frigid lake. That is, until spring comes and the ice starts to thaw.
Dangerous beauty: Highly flammable but trapped in ice, methane gas bubbles wind their way to the surface of Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada
Caused by the decomposition of organic matter—like plants, animals, and microbes—the extremely flammable gas begins to surge up in the warmer months as it floats ever closer to the surface.
For a time, it stays trapped beneath the last remnants of ice. And then the ice cracks and the methane bubbles away into the atmosphere.
That’s when the gas can pose a problem.
Waiting: The flammable gas bubbles within the ice, waiting until the thaw of spring
Spring: As warmth sets in, the ice begins to crack, allowing the gas to bubble up and and out into the atmosphere
Climate: Methane is believed to be 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide
Methane is a greenhouse gas, with 20 times the effect on climate change as the more commonly fingered culprit carbon dioxide.
There are many frozen methane lakes like Abraham Lake. In fact, ecologist worry that as the planet warms, more and more methane will be released from them, and they’ll increasingly add to the changing climate.
Methane is also very flammable.
Two-fold: There are methane-producing lakes like Lake Abraham all over the globe and researchers believe they may, themselves, compound global warming as more lakes melt and release methane
Firey: Methane is also flammable and can cause destructive explosions as the gas escapes
Scientists working with methane-producing lakes in Alaska proved it was the flammable gas and not something less menacing bubbling up by drilling a hole, pouring in some warm water, like a tongue of flame,fire burst from the frozen depths.
But as dangerous as its flammability makes it, methane is also useful.
Methane lakes are beginning to be utilized as sources of energy, such as the outfit on Lake Kivu in Rwanda. Here, developers have begun tapping into extensive gas deposits underneath the lake to be used in the creation of electricity.
Useful: But methane is also useful and as a clean burning fuel, once we're getting closer to safely harnessing from lake and ocean floors
Success: Japanese researchers have now successfully mine methane hydrate, a frozen form of the gas, from ocean floors
Similar techniques are being used to mine something called methane hydrate, a frozen and extremely concentrated form of methane, from lake and ocean floors.
Its potential uses and dangers aside, though, methane from the floor of Abraham Lake creates a visual treat as the bubbles wind and churn in their slow, eventual struggle to escape the blue lake.
Power: And at a lake in Rwanda, engineers have devised a way of capturing underwater methane to fuel turbines
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