The Research Council of Norway has awarded NGI 10 million for CryoGas, a project that will determine how much methane lies trapped beneath Svalbard's permafrost and glaciers, and how much could escape as the ice retreats.
Methane emissions from Arctic wetlands and thawing soils are increasingly well documented. Far less is known about the gas sourced and stored deeper, in the bedrock beneath permafrost and glaciers. Boreholes on Svalbard show that such accumulations of natural gas are widespread. Ice and frozen ground act as a seal that holds the gas in place. As glaciers melt and permafrost thaws, the gas can find new routes to the surface.
"People are worried about the gas released from beneath the glaciers as they retreat. The bigger question is how the natural gas reservoirs will react when there is no longer a seal on top of them. Emissions from those could be several orders of magnitude higher," says Peter Betlem, researcher at NGI and project leader.
Emissions are already substantial. Early findings from Svalbard show that methane released from recently deglaciated areas amounts to around 10 per cent of emissions from Norway's entire energy sector. Yet this is only a small fraction of the methane stored beneath the permafrost.
Fjords offer a view beneath the ice
On land, the gas is hard to study because frozen ground prevents fluids from flowing towards the surface, and thus makes such processes more difficult to measure. In Svalbard's fjords, the same rock formations lie beneath the seabed without a frozen layer on top. The researchers have already identified hundreds of sites where gas seeps from the fjord floor.
"The fjords are a natural laboratory for studying this kind of fluid flow when you don't have an ice seal," Betlem explains.
The project will map seepage in the fjords and survey how ground ice behaves from the coastal lowlands out into the sea. In parallel, the team will build models of how the natural gas formed, and how it has migrated and escaped as the ice advanced and retreated since the last ice age some 20,000 years ago. The results will then be used to estimate the emission potential of other Arctic regions with similar geology.
Relevant to Norway's climate targets
Through the Global Methane Pledge, Norway has signed up to the goal of cutting methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. Betlem argues that meeting that goal requires knowing the size of natural emissions.
"If you don't know how much methane is coming up, how can Norway promise a major reduction? It may turn out to be minimal for now, but that could change as the frozen ground retreats. It may also turn out that more substantial amounts of methane are already entering the atmosphere from Norway's Arctic regions. That should then be accounted for in the balance," he says.
CryoGas is led by NGI in collaboration with the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), UiT The Arctic University of Norway, MARUM at the University of Bremen and the University of Barcelona. Professor Andrew Hodson of UNIS is deputy project leader. Around ten researchers and two PhD candidates are involved.
The project is a Researcher Project for Young Research Talent funded through the Norwegian Research Council’s FRIPRO arena, which provides funding for excellent and groundbreaking research. The four-year project is scheduled to start in 2027.