STOCKHOLM, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — More than two months after the first Nord Stream gas leak was reported, methane levels are still elevated and may pose a threat to the ecosystem, researchers at a Swedish university said Sunday.
Research has shown that “a significant part of the methane gas that leaked from the pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea did not rise into the atmosphere. Instead, it dissolved in the water and spread with the currents,” says the University of Gothenburg. in a press release.
“In the first two weeks we saw extremely high levels of methane, almost too high for our sensors to measure and probably up to a hundred times higher than normal. Only now are we seeing a decrease back to normal levels, and yet, we still sometimes see patches of very high methane, says Bastien Queste, an oceanographer at the university.
The research has been done in collaboration with the Swedish ocean research foundation Voice of the Ocean. Scientists deployed underwater robots to take continuous measurements and data was sent to scientists via satellite.
“Large amounts of methane dissolved in the water will probably affect marine life,” says Thomas Dahlgren, marine biologist at the university’s department of marine sciences.
His theory is that the rapid decline of methane is due to it being digested by bacteria, which would lead to eutrophication and ocean acidification.
“That’s what happened after a similar spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010,” Dahlgren said.
The pipelines contained about 778 million cubic meters of methane when the pipelines were damaged, the Danish Energy Agency reported.
Source: sn.dk