Gas hydrate contribution to Late Permian global warming

- Models show progressive loss of gas hydrate through Middle to Late Permian warming.
- Continental hydrates were released over 500,000 years of the early Late Permian.
- Only deep slope hydrates remained by the Latest Permian Extinction time.
- Hydrate release cannot cause the negative carbon isotope shift at the extinction.

Rapid gas hydrate release (the “clathrate gun” hypothesis) has been invoked as a cause for the rapid global warming and associated negative carbon isotope excursion observed during the Latest Permian Extinction (LPE). We modeled the stability of gas hydrates through a warming Middle to Late Permian world, considering three settings for methane reservoirs: 1) terrestrial hydrates, 2) hydrates on exposed continental shelves during glacial sea level drop, and 3) hydrates in deep marine settings. Model results show that terrestrial hydrates would rapidly destabilize over ∼400 ky after deglaciation for moderate heatflow (40 mW/m2), and more rapidly for higher heat flow values. Exposed continental shelves would lose hydrates even more rapidly, after being flooded due to loss of ice storage on land. These two major hydrate reservoirs would thus have destabilized during the Middle to Late Permian climate warming, well prior to the LPE event. However, they may have contributed to the >2‰ negative C-isotopic shift during the late Middle Permian. Deep marine hydrates would have remained stable until LPE time. Rapid warming of deep marine waters during this time could have triggered destabilization of this reservoir, however given the configuration of one super continent, Pangea, hydrate bearing continental slopes would have been less extensive than modern day. This suggests that any potential gas hydrate release would have had only a minor contributing impact to the runaway greenhouse during the Latest Permian extinction.

124