The amount of methane released from stagnant freshwater could increase sharply with global warming, reveals an experimental study led by researchers from Queen Mary University in London and published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday .
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The experiment consisted in following for eleven years the emission of this gas in small ponds reproducing the conditions of a surface lake. At the end of the study, the ponds maintained at a temperature of 4 ° C higher than the ambient conditions produced twice as much methane as initially, much more than the control ponds. This increase was in fact a slight change in the microbial ecosystem of the seabed. The methane producing species, microorganisms close to bacteria called archaea, became more efficient than those capable of degrading the gas, breaking a subtle balance.
Since 2014, the annual rate of increase in methane has almost doubled, from an average of 6 parts per billion (of air molecules) to 10.This unexpected increase in methane production due to global warming has already
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