Scientists have reported that huge amounts of a powerful greenhouse gas are now bubbling up from a seabed which had been frozen for very long, in the north of Siberia, a development which has managed to raise fears that there could be far bigger leaks which might end up stroking global warming.

It was, however, not clear whether the Arctic emissions of methane gas were new or had been going on for centuries, unnoticed all the time, since before the time of the Industrial Revolution which happened in the 18th century and led to widespread use of fossil fuels that are mainly blamed for climate change.

Experts have revealed that nearly 8 million tons of methane every year, which is equivalent to the yearly total which was previously estimated from all of the oceans across the world, were seeping from the large stores which have been trapped under permafrost below the seabed north of Russia for very long.

"Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap. If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger", said Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.