Gas has sucker in the water, it is a bacterium
By Denis Delbecq • July 23rd, 2008 in 11:16 · Category: Actuality
Many years, the researchers fail to explain all the origins of the methane, a gas with greenhouse effect, which are found in the atmosphere. A new track seems to have been found (1). A team of the University of Hawaii indeed discovered that an oceanic bacterium produces some natural gas in the ocean, which is then liberated towards the atmosphere.
His first name, it is trichodesmium. Known to colour the water in red or yellow in some regions of the Pacific, this cyanobactérie transforms méthylphosphonates into phosphorus, in the presence of oxygen, showed David Karl and colleagues. Researchers had already noted for thirty years that the bacterium uses contributions in phosphorus in some regions. But having studied her in laboratory and in waters of the archipelago of Hawaii, Karl could explain his metabolism and show that he liberates some methane, a gas with greenhouse effect which warms up, in equal volume, twenty times more the atmosphere than the carbon dioxide. This gas, more and more present in the atmosphere, intervenes for 20 % in the greenhouse effect which supports our planet in a livable temperature.
According to David Karl, modifications led in the ocean by climatic warming could well reinforce the activity of the bacterium, and therefore amplify warming. But the researcher admits that some more observations will be needed to determine the quantities of methane issued by the small bacterium. Difficult to know if it is necessary to line her up in the directory of the major transmitters of methane, as rice fields, the animal husbandry of stock and escapes of gas pipeline, or if she will remain only an object of curiosity. After all, it is the first time, according to Karl, that a microbic production of methane in an environment containing some oxygen is noticed. But no way therefore to recover this gas and to hope to take from it any advantage. He is so indistinct in air as his extraction would use more energy which it is possible to hope to get from it!
(1) Nature Geoscience
Picture: © Denis Delbecq - on 2008
Article read 1,911 times. Tags:atmosphere, bacterie, climate, methane, ocean
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