Lurking beneath the permafrost of the Arctic, a methane monster is threatening to rear its ugly head. Scientists don’t yet know how big the threat is or where it will strike first; But what is clear is that the Arctic’s permanently frozen soil, called permafrost, is in danger of melting and releasing large amounts of extremely powerful fossil fuels from this ice. prison.

If this were to happen, the climate crisis could be seriously exacerbated; But most research to date has only scratched the surface of how much methane lies beneath the permafrost. A new attempt to systematically analyze the distribution of deep methane in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago has revealed a new and frightening reality.

Looking at data from eight exploration wells drilled by fossil fuel companies in local permafrost, Norwegian researchers found that half of them contained significant accumulations of methane gas. The findings suggest that methane, which is found two meters below the surface in the archipelago, beneath the frozen part of the earth, is not difficult to find and can easily migrate to the surface once it is “unlocked”. This is probably also true for other regions of the Arctic with similar geological origins.

“All wells that discovered gas accumulations did so by chance, whereas hydrocarbon exploration wells specifically targeting accumulations under more typical conditions had a success rate of well below 50 percent,” explains geologist and lead author Thomas Birchall of the University Center of Svalbard. .

“An anecdotal example is a well recently drilled near the airport in Longyearbyen. Drillers heard rumblings coming from the well, so we decided to take a look, armed with primitive alarms designed to detect explosive methane levels that explode instantly when we hold them over the well.”

Despite more than 50 years of drilling by fossil fuel companies, this is the first study to systematically analyze how much methane lies beneath Svalbard’s permafrost. There is currently no clear estimate of how much methane has leached from the Arctic permafrost. There are so many unknowns. Current research in Svalbard is based on data from a total of 18 hydrocarbon exploration wells, approximately 500 coal exploration wells and 10 scientific wells.

The results highlight some key areas of concern.

Birchall and his colleagues found that while the permafrost in Svalbard valleys acts as an effective insulating material, a “cryogenic cap” that stops the escape of methane deep into the atmosphere, higher altitude areas form much weaker barriers.

This is most likely because the permafrost in the valleys is formed by the underlying water table, creating a thick and impermeable layer of ice that can quickly recover from below. Here, researchers were able to detect an increase in pressure as gas accumulated in the wells.

In contrast, in higher altitude areas there is less water to withdraw, resulting in thinner, more dense ice forming on the frozen ground of permafrost. Researchers suspect that when fossil fuel companies drill in this type of terrain, they tend to find less hydrocarbon gas because that gas has already migrated either through geological features to another area of ​​the permafrost or into the atmosphere.

Much more work is needed to properly understand how permafrost in the Arctic traps gases, but the authors of the current study conclude: “Underground fluid systems in Svalbard are in an unstable state, and large-scale migration of hydrocarbons is likely ongoing.”

Currently, Birchell suspects the leak of methane gas from beneath the permafrost is small, but that could change rapidly as glaciers continue to retreat and permafrost melts.