Greenhouse gases from cattle

Methane itself is a greenhouse gas released in large quantities from cattle, termite mounds, rice paddy fields and swamps. The methane produced is the product of bacteria living under anaerobic conditions. In recent years focus has been directed towards a potential source of methane that represents both an opportunity and a threat. Methane has been found stored in the sediments of the continental shelf beneath the deep ocean, underneath the permafrost of the Arctic and in deep Antarctic ice cores (Figure 10.60). In these circumstances the methane is stored in the form of methane clathrates. Clathrates are structures formed by the inclusion of atoms or molecules of one kind, in this case methane, in cavities of the crystal lattice of another, in this case ice. The open, hydrogen-bonded structure of ice (see Chapter 4) lends itself to the formation of such caged structures. 

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