Descubierto un nuevo sumidero de metano

Subterranean atmospheres may act as daily methane sinks is the title of a paper authored by several researchers from the Spanish National Museum for Natural Sciences, the University of alicante and IRNAS, and published in volume 6 of the journal Nature Communications on 27 April, 2015.  Until today, it was known that methane, one of the main greenhouse effect gases after CO₂, it is removed from the atmosphere mainly by ultraviolet radiation-caused photooxidation processes, by the activity of metanotrophic bacteria and escape to the stratosphere. This work discovers that subterranean environments with high relative humidity may act as important methane sinks. These natural sinks, which are not univoquely related to the activity of metanotrophic microorganisms (absent from some of the studied caves) may be of great interest for the development of effective methods to reduce the volume of atmospheric methane, thus helping to the relieve of the global warming. The complete paper can be downloaded in the website of the journal, cliking on this link.

Fernandez-Cortes, Angel; Cuezva, Soledad; Alvarez-Gallego, Miriam; Garcia-Anton, Elena; Pla, Concepcion; Benavente, David; Jurado, Valme; Saiz-Jimenez, Cesareo; Sanchez-Moral, Sergio (2015). Subterranean atmospheres may act as daily methane sinks. Nat Commun 6. Article no. 7003. Doi: 10.1038/ncomms8003.

Supplementary information available for this article at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150427/ncomms8003/extref/ncomms8003-s1.pdf