The amount of methane gas escaping from the ground during the long cold period in the Arctic each year and entering Earth's atmosphere is likely much higher than estimated by current climate change models, concludes a major new study led by San Diego State University. A team comprising ecologists Walter Oechel (SDSU and Open University) and Donatella Zona (SDSU and the University of Sheffield) and scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Harvard University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Montana, found that far more methane is escaping from Arctic tundra during the cold months -- when the soil surface is frozen (generally from September through May) -- as well as from upland tundra, than prevailing assumptions and climate modelers previously believed. In fact, they found that at least half of the annual methane emissions occur in the cold months, and that drier, upland tundra can be a larger emitter of methane than wet tundra. The finding challenges critical assumptions in current global climate models. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that intensifies atmospheric warming and is approximately 25 times more potent per molecule than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. Methane trapped in the Arctic tundra comes primarily from microbial decomposition of organic matter in soil that thaws seasonally. This methane naturally seeps out of the soil over the course of the year, but scientists worry that climate change could lead to the release of even larger emissions from organic matter that is currently stabilized in a deep, frozen soil layer called permafrost.

Over the past several decades, scientists have used specialized instruments to accurately measure methane emissions in the Arctic and incorporated those results into global climate models. However, almost all of these measurements have been obtained during the Arctic's short summer. The region's long, brutal cold period, which accounts for between 70 and 80 percent of the year, has been largely 'overlooked and ignored,' according to Oechel. Most researchers, he said, figured that because the ground is frozen solid during the cold months, methane emissions practically shut down for the winter.

"Virtually all the climate models assume there's no or very little emission of methane when the ground is frozen," Oechel said. "That assumption is incorrect."

The water trapped in the soil doesn't freeze completely even below zero degrees Celsius, he explained. The top layer of the ground, known as the active layer, thaws in the summer and refreezes in the winter, and it experiences a kind of sandwiching effect as it freezes. When temperatures are right around zero degrees Celsius -- the so-called 'zero curtain' -- the top and bottom of the active layer begin to freeze, while the middle remains insulated. Microorganisms in this unfrozen middle layer continue to break down organic matter and emit methane many months into the Arctic's cold period each year.