Arctic Methane Emissions Sound Potential Climate Alarm
Posted March 8, 2010 in Solving Global Warming
It's been a busy couple months for climate deniers bent on spinning a handful of minor science errors into a web of distortion, misinformation and lies.
The Earth, unfortunately, isn't playing along.
In January we learned that the 2000s was the hottest decade on record—hotter than the 1990s, which was hotter than the 1980s.
Last week we learned that methane is seeping out of Arctic waters in significant amounts, loading up the atmosphere with a heat-trapping gas 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
We don't know whether this is a new development driven by Arctic warming or an ongoing natural process, though the extent of it has surprised the scientific community.
We do know, though, there's an enormous amount of methane frozen beneath the shallow waters of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, an area of nearly 800,000 square miles. And we know the release of even a small portion of this reservoir would be catastrophic.
"Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide," the NSF states in its March 4 press statement. "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate change."
This section of the Arctic sea floor is releasing 7 million metric tons of methane a year—as much as is being emitted by the rest of the ocean—according to work done by an international research team led by scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (see illustration). Their findings were published in the March 5 edition of Science magazine.
Arctic methane levels now average 1.85 parts per million, the highest level in 400,000 years, according to an excellent NSF fact sheet on the new methane findings.
Here's what's happening.
Over tens of thousands of years, methane has become trapped beneath the permafrost making up the Arctic seabed.
"But warming waters have begun to melt this subsea permafrost," the NSF fact sheet explains. "The result: destabilization and perforations in the permafrost that create pathways for releases of underlying methane."
When methane escapes from deep oceans, much of it mixes with oxygen in the water and is released at the surface as carbon dioxide. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, however, is shallow - just 164 feet deep or less. So methane escaping from these waters rises without oxidizing and enters the atmosphere largely unchanged.
Thawing permafrost also creates new methane, by unlocking frozen plant remains that then decompose. I wrote previously about an excellent Scientific American article (subscription) which has pictures of this process occurring.
It's important to note this methane may have been seeping into the atmosphere at high levels from this area for decades. The key question is how much and how quickly will global warming accelerate the process. As Martin Heimann writes in Science:
Wetlands and permafrost soils, including the sub-sea permafrost under the Arctic Ocean, contain at least twice the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Release of a sizable fraction of this carbon as carbon dioxide and/or methane would lead to warmer atmospheric temperatures, causing yet more methane to be released. It would thus create a positive feedback loop that amplifies global warming.
How much will this amplification increase global warming? Katey Walter Anthony, the author of the Scientific American article, estimates this at 0.3 degrees Celsius from permafrost melting. As I wrote previously:
That may not sound like a lot, but the problem with positive feedback loops is that they amplify each other in a non-linear way. So this amount of extra warming from just this one process could spell catastrophe when combined with other positive feedback loops that are also already beginning to occur, such as increased carbon dioxide emissions from warmer soils and reduced carbon dioxide uptake by warmer seas.
So the bottom line is that we just don’t know how much of the methane currently seeping out of Siberia is due to global warming or how much worse it will become. And that is a key point: What we don’t know could hurt us. Rather than being a reason for complacency or delay, this kind of uncertainty is a strong reason for taking action to minimize the downside risk.
What's important now is that we continue to monitor this disturbing development to determine whether Arctic methane emissions are increasing. Even relatively small upticks could mean large impacts on future climate change.
Meanwhile, this is yet another indicator of how important it is that we do what we can to reduce climate change while we still have time to act. The way to do that is to curb carbon emissions. The time for action is long overdue.
Bob Deans contributed to this post
Comments are closed for this post.
Comments
Henno — Mar 8 2010 10:10 PM
It is amazing that none of the paid climate skeptics have tried to drag this story down the muddy slope yet. I am convinced someone is paying people to post as climate skeptics one every post they can find to create confusion about climate change.
Let us face it, it is a really cheap exercise. You only need one or two people with many fake names.
John Liffee — Mar 8 2010 10:36 PM
@Henno - I'm afraid you misunderestimate the size of the anti-science hordes. Plenty of leather-lunged know-nothings lining up to do that work for nothing.
Sigh...
Eve Stevens — Mar 9 2010 12:25 AM
We all wondered what would be the next scare tactic and here it is. Scientists are worried about their credibility and they still keep pounding out garbage like this? We will distrust all scientists if you keep it up.
Eve
Ian Mc Vindicated — Mar 9 2010 09:34 AM
No one questions this ( the methane gas escaping ) , and as I am a skeptic, I believe the above information is probably correct.
The story was pretty good, as the author made factual assertations , in fact , all he made were sugggestions re dramatic climate change etc etc..but he did allude to the fact that we don't know the consequesnces, ( if any ) , and we have no way of knowing how long this gas has been escaping, etc...if I can make an assumption in saying that it has probably been happening since the earth began warming
thousands of years ago....so just discovering this methane gas doens't mean the end of the world.
The question is, what can we do about it, and the answer is simple. NOTHING .
I also believe man has zero impact on the global climate. Nature and the earth have been through glacial phases and global warming trends in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Sometimes, what you don't know won't hurt you either.
I bet if you asked anyone who had no knowledge of the climate change hysteria if they thought the climate was changing , they would say no. But we are surrounded by a mania surrounding the demise of mankind over increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.....
The majority of AGW global warming has been debunked by real lab scientists, and will in my opinion fade away over the next 5 years or so into the gutter of so many unscientific "theorys" which inaccurately predicted the end of mankind.
Ian
Mark — Mar 9 2010 03:15 PM
Ian- just by simple observation of the weather/climate in a certain region over a period of time will tell you that some significant changes are afoot. Here, in New England, a relatively stable weather area, storms have become much more intense and snow is not around as persistently as it has in the past (1970s - 1980s). Anyone who is just observant can see that large-scale changes are occurring. Worldwide, there is increasingly fast glacial melt (higher temperatures), arctic ice volume has decreased over the past 30 years, increases in ocean acidity (increased carbon dioxide), migratory patterns are changing, etc.... These are all observations. One hypothesis is that humans are causing it, which is actually not unbelievable: we have been burning fossil fuels in increasing quantities for 200 years and the atmospheric carbon dioxide content has increased from 285 ppm to over 389 ppm (an increase of 36%). Scientists have also found that CO2 retains thermal energy. Unfortunately, the climate system has enormous momentum (think global scale): it takes a while to make a change, and once you realize what is going on and try to stop it, another 20-50 years may need to pass before seeing any changes related to that action. If we are indeed affecting the climate, then we may only be seeing the changes from the CO2 added to the atmosphere from the 1960s, and we have not even seen what our last 40 years' worth of CO2 addition will do.
The point is we will never be certain that we are at fault. But what if we are wrong, even by the smallest margin? Can we afford to lose our very own habitat? Like our "favorite" Dick Cheney said, "“if there’s a “one percent chance” that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty.” On this scale for the climate, Dick is certainly correct.
What will it cost us? It will cost dearly. However, we will build new markets and new energy industries, the general environment will be cleaner (no spills, fires, mercury, pollution, acid rain, etc...).
skoob — Mar 9 2010 08:14 PM
THis is amazing to me, but what is more amazing is there is nothing on the internet on surviving this type of event. If a large amount of methane is released into the atmosphere what should or can we do to survive?
skoob6969@yahoo.com
Brad Arnold — Mar 11 2010 01:46 AM
"...how important it is that we do what we can to reduce climate change while we still have time to act. The way to do that is to curb carbon emissions."
Global Energy Forecast Foresees Large Jump in Demand by 2030: Worldwide demand for energy will increase by 44 percent in the next 20 years, with developing economies - particularly those in China, India, Brazil, and Russia - accounting for nearly 75 percent of the demand growth, according to a forecast from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
U.S Report Predicts 50 Percent Rise In CO2 By 2030: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that major increases in coal use by China and India will cause carbon dioxide emissions to jump to 42 billion tons in slightly more than two decades.
In other words, there isn't a snowballs chance in h@ll that mankind will curb carbon emissions. I suggest the cheap and simple way of immediately cooling the Earth: just add a little (more) sun dimming aerosol to the upper atmosphere.
Steve Jones — Mar 16 2010 11:13 AM
There are several problems.. One is that you say that the FRAUD put forth by the scientists does not mean that the underlying science isn't correct, and people say "why would the scientist lie"?
Well, I'd argue that first of all, the fact that they did KNOWINGLY and INTENTIONALLY lie and corrupt the data DOES make the rest of THEIR science irrelevant to me. I say it's just as likely that ALL of their findings are fraudulent, and that we just haven't caught them on other items....
Second, these same groups of scientists said just 20 years ago or less that we were in DANGER of a coming ice age.. What miraculous piece of information changed their minds so drastically? Could it be a change of who is funding them?
If you've EVER been involved with real science, you know that often, you have to fight for grant money. You need someone to believe that your research is important enough to fund it. We know that these scientists are corruptable, based on the corruption, lies, and fraud we have uncovered, and we also know that SOMETHING has made them change their mind 180 degrees from what they were SURE of just a short few years ago. I think it logically follows that we should be skeptical of all of their findings.
When reasonable arguments can be made that more change has occurred by a single volcano than all of the manmade CO2 in history, or that the big problem is our cows fart too much and need special food to save the world, I think we have to do more research before we come to any conclusions.
I am not against more research. I am only against destroying the world economies in the name of something that we dont know we have any control over.