Welcome to the Rhubarb talks website

The 'Rhubarb Talks' are a series of seminars by PhD students for PhD students at NOCS.



Upcoming seminars are posted below and cover a whole range of scientific exploits. Talks are held every other Monday afternoon at 4.30pm in the postgrad lounge (node 086) and are accompanied by nibbles and refreshments.



For more info or to volunteer for a talk, please contact The Rhubarb Team: Liz (E.Sargent@noc.soton.ac.uk),
Rosanna (R.Greenop@noc.soton.ac.uk), Maike (mjsp106@soton.ac.uk) or Sara (Sara.Cregeen@noc.soton.ac.uk)



Monday, March 12, 2012

March 12th 2012 Cathy Cole and Carolyn Graves


Methane Hydrates: A greehouse gas time bomb?


It¹s getting harder and harder to disagree that climate change is really happening. Since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have soared as a result of human activities, and current levels are the highest in 650,000 years (IPCC, 2007). But what about other gases in our atmosphere? Methane, for example, is over 60 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. There is far less of it in our atmosphere, just 0.5% compared with CO2, but that has not always been the case. Methane hydrates are a type of mineral made up of methane gas locked into a crystal lattice of frozen water, a bit like ice. Deep sea sediments hold an estimated 3000 Giga tons of carbon in the form of methane hydrates, and these rocks are extremely sensitive to small changes in temperature and pressure. On dissociation, the release of methane can lead to a runaway global warming effect.

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