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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-drain-it-then dept.

Red Sea huge source of air pollution, greenhouse gases: study:

Hydrocarbon gases bubbling from the bottom of the Red Sea are polluting the atmosphere at a rate equivalent to the emissions of some large fossil fuel exporting countries, researchers said Tuesday.

The gases seeping from the waters—which are ringed by the resorts and ports of several countries, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—then mix with emissions from industrial shipping and turned into noxious pollutants that are very harmful to human health.

The Middle East holds more than half of the world's oil and gas reserves[. The intense] fossil fuel exploitation that takes place there [means] the region releases enormous amounts of gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere.

But during a 2017 expedition around the Gulf, researchers at the Max Plank Institute for Chemistry noticed that levels of ethane and propane in the air above the Northern Red Sea were up to 40 times higher than predicted, even accounting for regional manmade emissions.

The team analysed possible sources for the gas emissions, including traffic, agriculture, burning of biomass, and power generation from hydrocarbons.

They came to an unexpected conclusion: the two gases had to be seeping out of the sea bed after escaping natural subterranean oil and gas reservoirs.

They were then carried by currents to the surface, where they mix with another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, which is emitted in high amounts by industrial shipping.

The resulting gas compounds are extremely harmful to human health, according to the team's study, published in Nature Communications.

Journal Reference:
Bourtsoukidis, E., Pozzer, A., Sattler, T. et al. The Red Sea Deep Water is a potent source of atmospheric ethane and propane. Nat Commun 11, 447 (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14375-0, www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14375-0


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:49PM (#950839)

    The oil companies buy it from the rich Arabs. They should pay for it.