Microbial origin of excess greenhouse gases in glacial ice.pdf

1 Microbial Origin of Excess Greenhouse Gases in Glacial Ice H. C. Tung,1 N. E. Bramall,2 and P. B. Price2? University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 Abstract We report the discovery of methanogenic archaea that account for abrupt 10× increases in methane concentration found by E. Brook at depths of 2954 and 3036 m in the GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2) ice core. The total microbial concentration we measured with direct cell counts tracks the excesses of methanogens that we identified by their F420 fluorescence. The highly localized (1 m thick) layers of methanogens suggest flow-induced mixing of layers of microbe-laden anaerobic basal ice with glacial ice. The metabolic rate we found for microbes at 2954 and 3036 m lies roughly on the Arrhenius line for microbes imprisoned in rock, sediment, and basal ice. Equating the loss rate of methane recently discovered in the Martian atmosphere to the production rate by possible methanogens, we estimate that their Martian habitat would be at a temperature of ~0oC and that the concentration, if uniformly distributed in a 100-m-thick layer, would be ~0.04 cell cm-3. 1 Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management 2 Dept. of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA ? To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bprice@ 2 One-sentence summary: Abrupt 10× increases in methane concentration in thin (1 m) layers of a Greenland ice core are found to be produced by methanogens and to correlate with 10× increases in total microbial cells in the same layers. Studies of microbial life in cold environments on Earth help us to understand how life could have arisen on other planets. Bacteria and archaea have been found in all subfreezing terrestrial environments (1-5). Studies of terrestrial psychrophiles and psychrotrophs have involved extraction and examination of cells from water, ice, or permafrost. Instrume