Methanol in the Ocean: Food for the Microbes

Interesting read at Ocean News & Technology, Major Source of Methanol in the Ocean Identified:

As one of the most abundant organic compounds on the planet, methanol occurs naturally in the environment as plants release it as they grow and decompose. It is also found in the ocean, where it is a welcome food source for ravenous microbes that feast on it for energy and growth.

While scientists have long known methanol exists in the ocean, and that certain microbes love to snack on it, they’ve been stymied by one key question: where does it come from?

Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have solved this mystery through the discovery of a massive – and previously unaccounted for – source of methanol in the ocean: phytoplankton.
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“Methanol can be considered a ‘baby sugar’ molecule and is rapidly consumed in the ocean by abundant bacteria – called methylotrophs – which specialize in this type of food,” said Dr. Tracy Mincer, WHOI associate scientist and lead author of the paper. “However, up until now, the thought was that methanol in the ocean came from an overflow of terrestrial methanol in the atmosphere. So, this discovery reveals a huge source of methanol that has gone completely unaccounted for in global methanol estimates.”

Mincer first became interested in the idea of biologically-produced methanol in the ocean through previous work where he found methanol-nibbling bacteria in a phytoplankton culture he was growing. Intrigued, he extracted the microbe’s DNA and its barcodes matched up with a well-known methylotroph in the ocean.

For those who may need a refresher on methanol:

Methanol is the simplest alcohol, being only a methyl group linked to a hydroxyl group. It is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable liquid with a distinctive odor very similar to that of ethanol (drinking alcohol). However, unlike ethanol, methanol is highly toxic and unfit for consumption. At room temperature, it is a polar liquid, and is used as an antifreeze, solvent, fuel, and as a denaturant for ethanol. It is also used for producing biodiesel via transesterification reaction.

Methanol is produced naturally in the anaerobic metabolism of many varieties of bacteria, and is commonly present in small amounts in the environment. As a result, the atmosphere contains a small amount of methanol vapor. But in only a few days, atmospheric methanol is oxidized by sunlight to produce carbon dioxide and water.

Methanol is also found in abundant quantities in star forming regions of space, and is used in astronomy as a marker for such regions.

As set out here,

Methylotrophs, in general, aerobically utilize C1 compounds by oxidizing them to yield formaldehyde. Formaldehyde, in turn, can either be "burned" for energy (by dissimilation to CO2) or assimilated into biomass, allowing the cell to grow using molecules like methanol as a sole carbon source.

Which I read as indicating that these things secrete CO2 as they burn through formaldehyde. I am prepared to be corrected on this.

If I am right, though, then we have a much larger than previously known possible natural source of carbon dioxide potentially reaching the atmosphere?

Better call the EPA.

Energy: A Way to Mine Methane Hydrates for Natural Gas?

Interesting research into potential new source of natural gas reported at Field [trial] to safely extract steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates successful:

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today the completion of a successful, unprecedented test of technology in the North Slope of Alaska that was able to safely extract a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates – a vast, entirely untapped resource that holds enormous potential for U.S. economic and energy security. Building upon this initial, small-scale test, the Department is launching a new research effort to conduct a long-term production test in the Arctic as well as research to test additional technologies that could be used to locate, characterize and safely extract methane hydrates on a larger scale in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

So, what the heck are "methane hydrates?" See here:

Methane hydrate is a cage-like lattice of ice inside of which are trapped molecules of methane, the chief constituent of natural gas. If methane hydrate is either warmed or depressurized, it will revert back to water and natural gas. When brought to the earth's surface, one cubic meter of gas hydrate releases 164 cubic meters of natural gas. Hydrate deposits may be several hundred meters thick and generally occur in two types of settings: under Arctic permafrost, and beneath the ocean floor. Methane that forms hydrate can be both biogenic, created by biological activity in sediments, and thermogenic, created by geological processes deeper within the earth.

One concern stirred by any long-term warming in the Arctic is that deposits of methane hydrates might warm enough to naturally release methane - which, according to some theories, might contribute to global warming because methane is a "greenhouse" gas. Being able to tap into such methane hydrates and mine them for their natural gas would provide another, potentially huge, source of natural gas. Natural gas is, of course, considered a "clean" fuel. So, using the gas trapped in the methane hydrates might work to preclude the "methane hydrate" disaster some have predicted:

Paleoclimatologists now believe that large scale, natural methane hydrate releases have been partly but significantly responsible for short-cycle global warming and global cooling cycles in the past. The recent discoveries in the Arctic, in fact, are thought to suggest that methane releases have contributed to the global warming that has occurred since the last ice age 15,000 years ago. [2]

The problem is that these methane releases have a strong positive feedback loop. As they increase the warming of the atmosphere that warming in turn increases methane release which in turn increases warming which in turn releases more...... You get the picture. Acceleration of global warming through this positive feedback loop, by increased methane concentration in the atmosphere, far more than CO2 concentrations, represents, to paleoclimatologists, a far greater risk of pushing us into the Venus effect, runaway global warming.

Additional research has been conducted in the Gulf of Mexico:

On May 6, 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Minerals Management Service, an industry research consortium led by Chevron, and others completed a landmark gas hydrate drilling expedition. The objective of the 21-day expedition was to confirm that gas hydrate can and does occur at high saturations within reservoir-quality sands in the Gulf of Mexico. This objective was fully met, with highly saturated hydrate-bearing sands discovered in at least in two of three sites drilled.

Gas hydrate is a unique substance comprised of natural gas (almost exclusively methane) in combination with water. Gas hydrate is thought to exist in great abundance in nature and has the potential to be a significant new energy source to meet future energy needs. However, prior to this expedition, there was little documentation that gas hydrate occurred in resource-quality accumulations in the marine environment.

Running out of energy, are we? Seems like we are not.

Just learning to develop the resources better.

DOE press release on Arctic work here. All images from DOE.

Earth's Water Delivered By Comets?

Comet Hartley 2

Well, why not?

Interesting report from BBC News Comet's water 'like that of Earth's oceans':

Comet Hartley 2 contains water more like that found on Earth than all the comets we know about, researchers say.

A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the fraction of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet's water.

Like our oceans, it had half the amount of deuterium seen from other comets.

The result, published in Nature, hints at the idea that much of the Earth's water could have initially come from cometary impacts.

Just a few million years after its formation, the early Earth was rocky and dry; most likely, something brought the water that covers most of the planet today.

Water has something of a molecular fingerprint in the amount of deuterium it contains, and only about half a dozen comets have been measured in this way - and all of them have exhibited a deuterium fraction twice as high as the oceans.

Asteroids, by contrast, give rise to the meteors and meteorites that arrive on Earth, making their deuterium fraction more well-established.

Meteoritic material has roughly the same proportion of deuterium that the Earth's oceans contain, and so the assumption has been that if water arrived from elsewhere, it came from asteroids.

Given the amount of water on earth, the delivery schedule must have been a long one.

Somali Pirates Bothering Scientific Research

Image credit – CSIRO

Australian and U.S. navies will have to pick up a new mission - protecting and deploying environmental data collecting buoys from Somali pirates as reported in this press release - Indian Ocean pirates impede climate observations:

Australian scientists have sought the help of the United States and Australian navies to plug a critical gap in their Argo ocean and climate monitoring program caused by Somali pirates operating in the western Indian Ocean.

"We have not been able to seed about one quarter of the Indian Ocean since the increase in the piracy and that has implications for understanding a region of influence in Australian and south Asian weather and climate," says CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship scientist, Dr Ann Thresher.

Over 30 nations contribute to the multi-million dollar Argo project, in which 3,000 robotic instruments provide near real-time observations of conditions such as heat and salinity in the top 2,000 metres of the ocean.

Australia, through CSIRO and the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), ranks second among countries based on the number of profilers providing data, with more than 325 profilers reporting to international data centres from the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans and the Tasman Sea. At nearly two metres in length the drifting profilers, or 'floats', are programmed to drift at 1000m for 10 days, then fall to 2000m and sample as they ascend to the surface to upload their data to satellites.

Although the Argo project offers shipping and defence benefits, its primary objective is to monitor ocean heat and salinity patterns that drive the climate and monsoonal systems which bring rain to Australia.

Dr Thresher said the program is heavily reliant on commercial shipping and research and chartered vessels to deploy the instruments.
At nearly two metres in length the drifting profilers, or 'floats', are programmed to drift at 1000m for 10 days, then fall to 2000m and sample as they ascend to the surface to upload their data to satellites.

"With the region north of Mauritius being a no-go area for most vessels due to pirate activity, we have approached the US and Australian navies to assist us in deployments of around 20 profilers, including 10 provided by the United Kingdom Argo project.

"This level of international and military cooperation is tremendously important to us in building a sustainable operating ocean-borne system that is providing the data at the core of current weather and climate observations and prediction," Dr Thresher said.

CSIRO is shipping one profiler to Florida for deployment by the US Navy, and is asking the Royal Australian Navy for help deploy another eight instruments in the area of highest risk.

A 20-metre South African yacht, Lady Amber, is under charter to CSIRO and has successfully deployed seven instruments near Mauritius in the Western Indian Ocean. Her working area, however, was severely restricted by pirate activity in this area and the positions of several profilers had to be changed to accommodate these restrictions. She will deploy another 15 instrument as she transits between Mauritius and Fremantle, where she will pick up another 39 floats for deployment northwest of the Australian North West Shelf – an area thankfully free of piracy.

It's not just a job . . .

As Sean W., who sent an email on this topic, noted, ". . . [T]he pirates are really in trouble now since they're messing with the global warming people!"

CSIRO is the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.