My name is Julia Steinbach, I am a postdoc at the Department of Applied Environmental Science, Stockholm University. My main interest is methane release in the Arctic so I’m focusing on methane measurements.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and there are huge amounts of it stored beneath the seafloor in our expedition’s study area. If such high amounts of methane are released into the atmosphere they could trigger an abrupt warming. Methane exists in different forms: as free gas, methane hydrates or stored in the permafrost ‘soil’ on the seafloor (which used to be tundra before being flooded 7000-15000 years ago). The continuous permafrost layer acts as a “lid”, keeping the large methane deposits from being released. However, if this “lid” starts melting due to the ongoing warming of the Arctic, methane can get into the water, and ultimately into the atmosphere.

Earlier expeditions have shown high methane concentrations in large parts of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which means that methane could be coming from the seafloor. During SWERUS-C3, we want to understand the sources of methane: does it come only from thawing subsea permafrost, or does it come from the gas deposits beneath and within it? Understanding the sources can also help us get an idea about how quickly the methane will get into the atmosphere – and how much of it is being released.

Our “methane team” on the ship consists of six people, three women and three men, and we are quite international – one Swedish, one Swiss, three Russians and one German (that’s me). Together we will take a lot of samples, mainly water samples but also sediment samples from the seafloor and air samples above the water we’re sampling. Part of the samples will analysed already on the ship to see how much methane is there and to identify interesting areas or “hotspots”. Other samples will be prepared for isotope analysis in the lab back home.

When we get to the sampling stations we will get really busy so I am not sure how frequent my future posts will get but I’ll try my best to keep you updated about our work and daily life on the Oden!