They find a threat to humanity "asleep" in the sea – ElSol.com.ar – Diario de Mendoza, Argentina

Climate change is likely to cause mbadive carbon leakage into the seabed, a process that has occurred in the past and has resulted in an increase in atmospheric temperature of this magnitude. end the ice age, suggests a search cited by the portal Phys.org.

The study, whose results were published last January in the journal Environmental Research Letters, indicates that at the end of the Pleistocene, about 17,000 years ago, a large amount of greenhouse gases escaped from the ocean floor into the atmosphere due to: hydrothermal activity.

These submarine reservoirs carbon dioxide and methane they occur when volcanic activities release gas, which is then frozen until encapsulated in the form of a mbad of hydrates in the liquid or solid state.

If the geological carbon trapped in these reservoirs is released, the gas level of greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, it would suffer a considerable increase, further exacerbating climate change.

Experts warn that at the current rate of global warming – caused largely by the human factor – the oceans would reach this critical temperature by the end of the century. And they indicate, as an example, a large coal tank located in the western Pacific, off the Taiwan coast, which only needs a few more increments. degrees Celsius to lose stability.

"The last time this happened, climate change was so important that it caused the end of the ice age," said Lowell Stott, a researcher at the University of California. Southern California (USA) and lead author of the book. And he concluded: "Once this geological process has begun, we can no longer turn it off"