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Friday, August 8, 2014

The Arctic Methane Monster's Rapid Rise


Researcher Jennifer Hynes recently gave a frightening presentation about the situation in the Arctic and the odds that things will rapidly spiral out of control soon, escalating into runaway global warming a few decades from now. 




Above, a slide from the presentation, warning about the danger of earthquakes causing methane hydrate destabilization (from: Smoke Blankets North America). As the map below shows, 77 M4+ earthquakes did hit locations around Greenland in the year 2014 up until August 4.


Below is Jennifer's presentation, also on youtube at youtube.com/watch?v=a9PshoYtoxo



The image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies in the Arctic at August 7, 2014.


Warm water is carried into the Arctic Ocean by the Gulf Stream, as illustrated by the image below.
[ click on image to enlarge ]
The image shows how the Gulf Stream brings warm water to the edge of the sea ice. Waters close to Svalbard reached temperatures as high as 15.6°C (60.1°F) on August 8, 2014 (green circle). Note that what the image shows are sea surface temperatures only. At greater depths (say 300 m), warm water is pushed through the Greenland Sea by the Gulf Stream. Since the passage west of Svalbard is rather shallow, a lot of this warm water comes to the surface there. The high sea surface temperatures west of Svalbard thus indicate that the Gulf Stream is carrying very warm water (warmer than 15°C) at greater depths and is pushing this underneath the sea ice north of Svalbard.

As said, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog at climateplan.blogspot.com and as illustrated by the image below.



4 comments:

  1. I doubt the map of NOAA / NCEP. More credible in my opinion is a map of the DMI. Therefore, the Barents Sea is cold and it is true, because the ice is growing there.

    Second. Hot spot next to Svalbard is irrelevant. Svalbard ice per this year at all does not melt.

    The ice melts very slowly, it is possible that this year will be 5 million km2.

    Earthquakes occurred for centuries. Why now suddenly have to destabilize the hydrates?

    This summer in the Arctic is quite cold.

    In my opinion, the Arctic will be ice-free, maybe somewhere in 2020.

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    Replies
    1. The arctic will be ice free September of this year or the summer of 2015. If you don't trust what was presented here then there is videos of methane bubbling out of the sea floor.
      http://motherboard.vice.com/read/if-we-release-a-small-fraction-of-arctic-carbon-were-fucked-climatologist

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    2. Ice mass is the important parameter and not ice coverage. Ice coverage has an effect on albedo which is negligable in arctic winter, while ice mass indicates the actual thermodynamic situation. Ice coverage makes. Ice mass continues to decrease at both poles as well as in alpine regions: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/663

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  2. Arctic is Earth's temp regulator. To actually be able to have a chance to save Earth ecosystem, to keep HZ, key shift needs to take place aligning will-of-mankind, to value open systems of life Nature, Not $. This can be expressed using physics of system isolation. Presently monetary world is flat lethal to Earth -it's predatory. No matter how hard a person or group would try or wish to help Earth. Corporate nixes it.. At root is lack of key accounting error correction to give Earth standing. Unimpeachable right to her open systems of Nature that hold Earth habitable.
    However, War must end forever and the world act as one with heart.

    ReplyDelete