Wetlands likely source of methane from ancient warming event

Analysis of Greenland ice led by Scripps researchers could allay fears about methane 'burp' accelerating current global warming trend

		IMAGE: Horizontal banding of ice layers reveals thousands of years of ice formation at Greenland's Pakitsoq ice margin. Geoscientists frequent Greenland's ice sheets to build records of paleoclimate. Click here for more information.

An expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.