Modelling methane hydrate stability changes and gas release due to seasonal oscillations in bottom water temperatures on the Rio Grande cone, offshore southern Brazil

• Published in: Marine and Petroleum Geology
• Main Authors: Braga, R., Iglesias, R.S., Romio, C., Praeg, D., Miller, D.J., Viana, A., Ketzer, J.M.
• Other Authors: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul Brasil = Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul Brazil = Université catholique pontificale de Rio Grande do Sul Brésil (PUC-RS), Aarhus University Aarhus, Géoazur (GEOAZUR 7329), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD France-Sud ), Petrobras Rio de Janeiro, Linnaeus University
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: Methane hydrate; Numerical simulation; Bottom water temperature; South Atlantic Ocean; [SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean; Atmosphere; [SDU.STU.OC]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Oceanography
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-02362956; https://hal.science/hal-02362956/document; https://hal.science/hal-02362956/file/Braga%26al_JMPG_accepted.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2019.104071

International audience The stability of methane hydrates on continental margins worldwide is sensitive to changes in temperature and pressure conditions. It has been shown how gradual increases in bottom water temperatures due to ocean warming over post-glacial timescales can destabilize shallow oceanic hydrate deposits, causing their dissociation and gas release into the ocean. However, bottom water temperatures (BWT) may also vary significantly over much shorter timescales, including due to seasonal temperature oscillations of the ocean bottom currents. In this study, we investigate how a shallow methane hydrate deposit responds to seasonal BWT oscillations with an amplitude of up to 1.5 °C. We use the TOUGH + HYDRATE code to model changes in the methane hydrate stability zone (MHSZ) using data from the Rio Grande Cone, in the South Atlantic Ocean off the Brazilian coast. In all the cases studied, BWT oscillations resulted in significant gaseous methane fluxes into the ocean for up to 10 years, followed by a short period of small fluxes of gaseous methane into the ocean, until they stopped completely. On the other hand, aqueous methane was released into the ocean during the 100 years simulated, for all the cases studied. During the temperature oscillations, the MHSZ recedes continuously both horizontally and, in a smaller scale, vertically, until a permanent and a seasonal region in MHSZ are defined. Sensitivity tests were carried out for parameters of porosity, thermal conductivity and initial hydrate saturation, which were shown to play an important role on the volume of methane released into the ocean and on the time interval in which such release occurs. Overall, the results indicate that in a system with no gas recharge from the bottom, seasonal temperature oscillations alone cannot account for long-term gas release into the ocean.