• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Frozen Bubbles Form In Canada’s Abraham Lake

March 24, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

This article first appeared in Issue 6 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS. 

If you can brave the freezing temperatures of Abraham Lake in January, you’ll be rewarded with one of nature’s great curiosities as you walk above thousands of frozen bubbles. The diaphanous spheres are beautiful, but they also pack a punch, formed from a highly flammable and potent form of greenhouse gas.

Advertisement

The bubbles of methane form on the bed of the lake where microbes feed on decomposing organic matter, like dead animals and plants, releasing gases. Methane doesn’t like to stay trapped in water, so it forms bubbles that float to the surface. In summer, they are released, contributing to Earth’s methane emissions, but in winter they can get trapped on their way to the surface.

If you’re a smoker, it’s worth noting that hanging around with open flames anywhere there’s methane is a bad idea. There are some cool videos online that demonstrate what can happen when these frozen bubbles release their methane burps in the presence of fire, so leave your lighters at home.

The bubbles eventually go out without much of a bang when the temperature warms in spring and the ice melts. Provided no unsuspecting passersby have chosen the moment of melt to light up a cigar, the gas will seep silently out of the ice and into the atmosphere. Here, they become a bit of a problem.

Abraham Lake isn’t alone in burping out methane during its annual thawing. There are lakes all over the globe doing it, but some of the greatest concentrations of stored methane sit in Arctic ice, which is under threat from the ongoing climate crisis.

Advertisement

So, if you find yourself in Canada at this frosty time of year for the country, take a stroll across nature’s frozen lava lamp. These bubbles are a remarkable quirk of nature, and a reminder that there’s work to be done if we’re to have frozen microbe burps to admire in the future.

The best time to see the frozen bubbles is in January and February. Strolling on ice always comes with its challenges, but there are online guides to help you explore safely. 

CURIOUS is a digital magazine from IFLScience featuring interviews, experts, deep dives, fun facts, news, book excerpts, and much more. Issue 8 is OUT NOW.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Federer-backed shoemaker On aims for over $6 billion valuation in U.S. IPO
  2. Analysis: Why the Fed might welcome a bond market tantrum
  3. Crunch time for Congress with Biden’s agenda, and debt limit, on the line
  4. Facebook products ‘harm children, stoke division,’ whistleblower says

Source Link: Frozen Bubbles Form In Canada’s Abraham Lake

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Impact That Made Meteor Crater May Have Triggered Giant Grand Canyon Landslide
  • Get Ready, Skywatchers: A “Dazzling” Total Lunar Eclipse Is Coming In 2025
  • How A Man Won The Lottery 14 Times Using Unbelievably Basic Math
  • What Are The Amazon’s “Flying Rivers”? And Why Every Single One Of Us Relies On Them
  • Curious New Microbe With Tiny Genome Toes The Line Between Cell And Virus
  • We’ve Just Found Out Where The World’s Longest-Living Vertebrate Has Its Babies
  • For The First Time, An Animal Has Been Shown Responding To Plant-Produced Sounds
  • Deep Ocean Currents Have “Weather” And Seasonal Changes That We’re Only Just Learning About
  • Stratus: What Are The Symptoms Of The Latest COVID-19 Subvariant To Spread Around The World?
  • In 1927, Henry Ford Tried To Build A Town In The Amazon And Things Went Very, Very Badly
  • Human Botfly: Say Hello To The Parasite That Would Love To Get Under Your Skin
  • Is The Weather Making Your Headache Worse?
  • “Zoning Out” Actually Helps You Learn? Data From Up To 90,000 Brain Cells Says So
  • Over Past 250,000 Years, Three Major Waves Of Human-Neanderthal Interbreeding Have Been Identified
  • Zebrafish “Catch” Yawns Just Like Us – We Might Need To Rethink Evolution To Account For That
  • 80,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Footprints Reveal How Children Hunted On Beaches
  • 5 Animals That Have Absolutely No Business Jumping (In Our Very Humble, Definitely Unbiased Opinion)
  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version