The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the hypothesis that rises in sea temperatures (and/or falls in sea level) can trigger the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and permafrost which, because the methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, leads to further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilization – in effect initiating a runaway process as irreversible, once started, as the firing of a gun.
In its original form, the hypothesis proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming in a timescale less than a human lifetime, and might be responsible for warming events in and at the end of the last ice age. This is now thought unlikely.
However, there is stronger evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth on a number of occasions in the past, over timescales of tens of thousands of years; most notably in connection with the Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.
Read more about Clathrate Gun Hypothesis: Mechanism, Possible Release Events, Related Mechanism: Dissolved Methane Release, Current Outlook, Possible Outcomes, In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words gun and/or hypothesis:
“Resorts advertised for waitresses, specifying that they “must appear in short clothes or no engagement.” Below a Gospel Guide column headed, “Where our Local Divines Will Hang Out Tomorrow,” was an account of spirited gun play at the Bon Ton. In Jeff Winney’s California Concert Hall, patrons “bucked the tiger” under the watchful eye of Kitty Crawhurst, popular “lady” gambler.”
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)