Michael Reilly, Discovery News
Feb. 19, 2009 -- Whether devastating faults, dank caves or
mud cracks on a drying desert plain, Earth's surface is riddled with fractures. Now a new study
had found that the cracks exhale large quantities of gas, perhaps enough to
affect global warming.
Noam Weisbrod of
If air in the crack is just 7 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature,
it is buoyant enough to rise out of any crack in the ground bigger than 1
centimeter (0.4 inch) across, bringing with it any gases that leak out of the
surrounding soil or rock.
But the team was surprised to find that the crack they studied gave off
water vapor up to 200 times faster than areas without fractures.