Scientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. An MIT paper elucidates how this underground methane in frozen regions would escape and concludes that methane trapped under the ocean may already be escaping through vents in the sea floor a million times faster than previously believed. Some scientists have associated the release, both gradual and fast, of subsurface ocean methane with climate change of the past and future. Read more.