Masaki and Momoe Kunimoto Memorial AwardHonolulu’s James Niino honored for contributions to vocational education. Read more
Underwater Methane PathwaysManoa researchers discover a new pathway for methane that could impact greenhouse gasses. Read moreLifetime Achievement AwardThe Society of Professional Journalists honors Manoa’s Beverly Ann Deepe Keever. Read more
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A conceptual view of the role of sunlight in producing methylphosphonate through food-web processes (circle), bacterial decomposition (square), producing the greenhouse gas methane CH4. Image credit: C-MORE/SOEST.
Underwater Methane Pathways
Manoa researchers have uncovered a new pathway for methane production in the oceans, which has a significant potential impact for the study of greenhouse gas production on the planet. The article, released in Nature Geoscience, reveals that aerobic decomposition of an organic, phosphorus-containing compound, methylphosphonate, may be responsible for the supersaturation of methane in ocean surface waters.
Professor David Karl was interested in this “methane enigma” and why the surface ocean was loaded with methane, over and above levels found in the atmosphere. When looking at the literature, Karl found a possible solution to the enigma, in the compound methylphosphonates, a very unusual organic compound only discovered in the 1960s. In the laboratory, the aerobic growth of certain bacteria on methylphosphonate can lead to the production of methane, but until now this process of methylphosphonate degradation in the ocean had not been suggested as a possible pathway for the aerobic production of methane in the sea.
“This is a newly recognized pathway of methane formation that needs to be incorporated into our thinking of global climate,” says Karl. “Since our oceans cover three fourths of the planet, you just need to stimulate this pathway a little bit and you’re going to create more methane. And one way you can tweak it is to stratify the oceans, which we know will happen. All of the climate models show that the ocean will become more nutrient limited over time.”
The other Manoa contributors to the article are Graduate Assistant Lucas Beversdorf, Research Specialist Karin M. Bjorkman and Assistant Professor Matthew J. Church.