A 160,000-year-old history of tectonically controlled methane seepage in the Arctic.

The geological factors controlling gas release from Arctic deep-water gas reservoirs through seabed methane seeps are poorly constrained. This is partly due to limited data on the precise chronology of past methane emission episodes. Here, we use uranium-thorium dating of seep carbonates sampled from the seabed and from cores drilled at the Vestnesa Ridge, off West Svalbard (79°N, ~1200 m water depth). The carbonate ages reveal three emission episodes during the Penultimate Glacial Maximum (~160,000 to 133,000 years ago), during an interstadial in the last glacial (~50,000 to 40,000 years ago), and in the aftermath of the Last Glacial Maximum (~20,000 to 5,000 years ago), respectively. This chronology suggests that glacial tectonics induced by ice sheet fluctuations on Svalbard mainly controlled methane release from Vestnesa Ridge. Data corroborate past methane release in response to Northern Hemisphere cryosphere variations and suggest that Arctic deep-water gas reservoirs are sensitive to temperature variations over Quaternary time scales.

Timescales of methane seepage on the Norwegian margin following collapse of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet.

Gas hydrates stored on continental shelves are susceptible to dissociation triggered by environmental changes. Knowledge of the timescales of gas hydrate dissociation and subsequent methane release are critical in understanding the impact of marine gas hydrates on the ocean-atmosphere system. Here we report a methane efflux chronology from five sites, at depths of 220-400 m, in the southwest Barents and Norwegian seas where grounded ice sheets led to thickening of the gas hydrate stability zone during the last glaciation. The onset of methane release was coincident with deglaciation-induced pressure release and thinning of the hydrate stability zone. Methane efflux continued for 7-10 kyr, tracking hydrate stability changes controlled by relative sea-level rise, bottom water warming and fluid pathway evolution in response to changing stress fields. The protracted nature of seafloor methane emissions probably attenuated the impact of hydrate dissociation on the climate system.

Snezna jama (Slovenia): Interdisciplinary dating of cave sediments and implication for landscape evolution.

Caves are important markers of surface evolution, since they are, as a general rule, linked with ancient valley bottoms by their springs. However, caves can only be dated indirectly by means of the sediments they contain. If the sediment is older than common dating methods, one has to use multiple dating approaches in order to get meaningful results. U/Th dating, palaeomagnetic analysis of flowstone and sediment profiles, cosmogenic dating of quartz pebbles, and mammalian dating allowed a robust estimate of speleogenesis, sediment deposition, climatic change at the surface, and uplift history on the Periadriatic fault line during the Plio-Pleistocene. Our dates indicate that Snezna jama was formed in the (Upper) Miocene, received its sedimentary deposits during the Pliocene in a rather low-lying, hilly landscape, and became inactive due to uplift along the Periadriatic and Sava faults and climatic changes at the beginning of the Quaternary. Although it is only a single cave, the information contained within it makes it an important site of the Southern Alps.