Scientists get bogged down about climate change

[link to www.theregister.co.uk]
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Ancient methane tells a story

It turns out that digging the channel tunnel was good for more that just a high speed rail link with the rest of Europe: it might help us understand one of the many interconnected strands of our planet's ecosystem and climate.

During the (very slow) excavations on the British side of the tunnel, the engineers dug up a 55 million year-old bog, Cobham Lignite, the BBC reports.

According to research published in Nature, scientists led by Bristol University's Richard Paincost found a link between methane released by the ancient bogs (back in the day) and the dramatic and sustained warming of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. This period saw an extremely rapid rise in global temperatures. In just a few thousand years, the global average went up at least five degrees.

"This is the first time that we have seen evidence from the geological record of methane cycling in response to a warming event," Dr Pancost told the BBC. "It provides insight into how some ecosystems could respond to rapid warming-induced changes in climate, and, therefore, how they could respond to warming in the future."