Massive methane leak from Nord Stream suspected of sabotage  

What are the effects on the climate?

The methane leak from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines has implications for climate change, but fortunately experts say the scale is limited. At the same time, the European Union is talking about a targeted attack as a total of four leakage points have been identified.

The pipelines are not operational, but they still contain gas and the Danes say the leak will continue for another week. Currently there are only estimates of the amount of natural gas escaping into the atmosphere from the Baltic Sea, but in any case it is a small percentage of global emissions.

This is a tragedy, an environmental crime if it was intentional. Although the amount of gas leaked from the pipeline is obviously huge, it is not the climate catastrophe we are thinking of.

Natural gas consists mainly of methane, which is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a century time scale. However, it remains in the atmosphere for about a decade, unlike CO2 which remains for hundreds or thousands of years. Some of the methane will be converted to CO2 due to the reaction with water, but it reaches the surface so violently that most of it does not have time to convert to dioxide.

Attempts to estimate the leak put 177 million cubic meters of natural gas in Nord Stream 2. This is equivalent to the gas consumption of 124,000 households in a year.

The leak will have ” immediate and strong warming effects and cause poor air quality ” in surrounding countries, but its effects are small compared to daily leaks from poorly maintained gas networks on a global scale.