Editorial: Natural methane emissions in a changing arctic – implications for climate and environment

Abstract

Natural methane emissions have received significant attention in recent years due to the documented increase in atmospheric concentrations of methane and its elevated global warming potential relative to CO2. Over the past decades, the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet (Rantanen et al., 2022). Arctic amplification of global warming drives a pressing need to assess the current and future vulnerability of natural methane accumulations under continued high latitude warming. Methane accumulations exist in a variety of Arctic settings, including deep-water marine environments, shallow-water continental shelves and fjords hosting relict subsea permafrost and gas hydrate, in and beneath onshore permafrost, and beneath glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet. Continued climate warming is making increased methane leakage from these accumulations more likely. Even deeper conventional gas reservoirs could leak methane as the overlying permafrost and gas hydrates degrade. These Research Topic were the focus of “Methane in a Changing Arctic,” a conference convened by the Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrates, Environment and Climate (CAGE) at UiT—The Arctic University of Norway from 14–16 September 2022. CAGE was a Norwegian Centre of Excellence funded by the Research Council of Norway from 2013 to 2023, and a key focus of CAGE’s research was related to the interaction between Arctic climate change and methane emissions. CAGE’s research legacy, along with the 2022 conference, sparked interest in developing the Frontiers Research Topic that has now produced 15 original research articles. These studies cover all aspects of methane migration, starting with the geosphere (e.g., sub-seafloor methane reservoirs) through the biosphere (e.g., microbes consuming this methane and acting as a critical sink) to the hydrosphere (e.g., ocean, other waters), the cryosphere (e.g., permafrost sediments, ice sheets, and glaciers) and potentially into the atmosphere. The papers collectively contribute to improved understanding of complex high-latitude methane emissions. The studies investigate timescales from the Pleistocene Ice Ages to the present, demonstrating how past methane seepage histories may inform future climate scenarios.