Methane-producing Microbe Blooms In Permafrost Thaw

In northern Sweden and some parts of the world, parts of permafrost are thawing because of the climate warming up. Because of this, new microbes are being discovered and are adding to the list of microbe species. One such microbe, found in the mires of northernmost Sweden, flourishes and produces large amounts of greenhouse gases. Several billion years ago, before cyanobacteria, archaea flourished in warm, shallow oceans and letting out methane into the atmosphere. Today, most of the archaea's descendants hide in places where oxygen cannot reach them, where they also still produce methane. The methanogen archaea in permafrost have led still lives in the frozen soil. The small amounts of methane they produced have stayed below in the ice or have been consumed by methane-eating neighbors. But because of the recent heating-up of the arctic regions, these methanogens now have access to carbon dioxide and hydrogen which they convert into methane. This methane now contributes further global warming. Rhiannon Mondav, PhD student of limnology at Uppsala Universtiy, is part of the international research group which decided to look for methanogens in the Stordalen mire. She discovered a previously unknown methanogen, and with the help of the research group, mapped its genome and named it Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis. This newly discovered methanogen exists in such abundance that it made up 90 percent of the archaea in the Stordalen mire. Now that the new species has been described, it has been found to exist also in other peatlands and mires, contributing in a significant way to global methane production and thereby global warming. From the sound of the researchers in the rest of the article and the writer, it sounds like the discovery of this microbe now just goes to prove that the Earth is going to start warming up a lot faster and their is much worry. Nothing in this article is unclear and the writer explains it in great detail.

The wet areas show where the mire has thawed out completely. Here methanogens thrive.