New paper in Environmental Science & Technology

Enhancing Surface Methane Fluxes from an Oligotrophic Lake: Exploring the Microbubble Hypothesis

Daniel F. McGinnis, Georgiy Kirillin, Kam W. Tang, Sabine Flury, Pascal Bodmer, Christof Engelhardt, Peter Casper, and Hans-Peter Grossart

In an oligotrophic lake, we observed up to a 3 – 4 times enhancement of the surface mass transfer rate of low-soluble methane relative to soluble CO2, both important greenhouse gases. We attribute this enhancement to the presence of microbubbles hypothesized to enhance the surface gas flux of all low-soluble dissolved gases present in the lake surface, potentially altering the lake carbon balance.

Environmental Science & Technology Article 26 Jan 2015

Highlights