Alaskan Lake Bubbling with Climate-Damaging Methane Gas: NASA Study

JUNEAU – It’s not only the bottom of the US Pacific Ocean that is bubbling at the Earth’s fault and being associated with doomsday sign . Now the Alaskan lake bottom is also “spouting” bubbles.

Walter Anthony, a scientist working with NASA, says the lake is so filled with climate-damaging gases that you can see it bubbling to the surface.

The lake will appear more and more as Alaska’s ice sheet melts as temperatures rise and wildfires increase, according to a 2021 study.

NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) is studying its effects on climate change, according to NASA.

Thermokarst lakes arise when permafrost, the ground that should remain frozen all year round, begins to thaw.

As this happened, the huge block of ice that was pinned down on the ground also melted, causing the ground to collapse by tens of centimeters.

“Years ago, the ground was about three meters higher and it was a fir forest,” said Katey Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, describing a thermokarst called the Big Trail lake in Alaska.

He has worked with NASA’s ABoVE project to study the effects of the Big Trail lakes on climate change. As water invades the leftover drain holes, so does bacteria.