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Seafloor Gas-Hydrate Stability Zone & Slope Failure

Interactive 3D simulator of the seafloor gas-hydrate stability zone: warm the bottom water and watch the hydrate stability boundary retreat, free gas vent through a chimney, and the slope factor of safety drop as excess pore pressure builds.

Climate, Ecology & Environment3DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 2D version

Beneath the seafloor, methane hydrate is only stable within a narrow band where pressure and temperature satisfy its phase-equilibrium curve — the Gas Hydrate Stability Zone (GHSZ). This simulator builds that boundary from real hydrostatic pressure and geothermal-gradient physics, then lets you warm the bottom water, change the water depth, or steepen the geotherm to watch the GHSZ base retreat upward. As hydrate dissociates at the base, free gas accumulates in a cap beneath the remaining stability zone and vents through a central chimney toward the seafloor — while an infinite-slope stability calculation tracks how the resulting excess pore pressure erodes the slope's factor of safety, the mechanism proposed for several hydrate-linked submarine landslides.

⚙ Under the hood

Model the pressure-temperature stability boundary of seafloor methane hydrate, watch ocean warming push the stability zone's base upward as free gas vents through a chimney, and track how the resulting excess pore pressure erodes submarine slope stability.

methane hydrateseafloorclimateslope stabilitygeohazardphase equilibrium

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install