Climate Change Accelerating

Methane levels as high as 2562 ppb were recorded on October 9, 2014, as illustrated by the image below.

Many grey areas show up in the image where QC (quality control) failed, as it was too hard to read methane levels in the respective area, apparently due to high moisture levels (i.e. snow, rain or water vapor) in the atmosphere.

As above image illustrates, cloud cover is high over the Arctic, while there is also precipatation in the form of snowfall.

In other words, high levels of methane (above 1950 ppb, colored yellow) could be present over a much larger part of the Arctic Ocean, while methane in these grey areas could be even higher than the measured peak level of 2456 ppb.

This appears to be confirmed by persistent high methane levels over vast areas across the Arctic Ocean both in the morning (top part of the image further above) and in the afternoon (bottom part of image) on 9 October 2014.

Methane levels are this high over the Arctic Ocean for the number of reasons, including:

• The Gulf Stream keeps pushing warm water into the Arctic Ocean.
• The resulting eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean constitute a feedback that accelerates warming in the Arctic. 
• As the Arctic warms up more rapidly than the rest of Earth, the Arctic's ice and snow cover will decline, further accelerating warming in the Arctic.
• As the Arctic warms up more rapidly than the rest of Earth, the speed at which jet streams circumnavigates the Northern Hemisphere will weaken, making it meander more, resulting in a greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires. 

Here's an example of intense warming. Look at what is currently happening on Greenland.

As the image above right shows, sea surface temperature anomalies as high as +1.89°C hit the North Atlantic (on October 8, 2014). 

Furthermore, high cloud cover over the Arctic (image further above) makes it hard for the heat there to radiate out into space, further contributing to high temperature anomalies.

The image on the right shows high temperature anomalies over Greenland and parts of the Arctic Ocean on October 11, 2014. Note that anomalies are averaged out over the course of the day (and night).

The image below (right) shows anomalies at the top end of the scale hitting large parts of Greenland at a specific time during this day. The left part of the image below shows how this could happen, i.e. jet streams curling around Greenland trapping warm air inflow from the North Atlantic.

As said, as the Arctic warms up more rapidly than the rest of Earth, the speed at which jet streams circumnavigate the Northern Hemisphere will weaken, making the jets meander more and creating patterns that can trap heat (or cold) for a number of days over a given area. Due to the height of its mountains, Greenland is particularly prone to be increasingly hit by heatwaves resulting from such blocking patterns. Warming changes the texture of snow and ice, making it more slushy and darker, which also makes that it absorbs more of the sunlight's heat, further accelerating melting.

As Paul Beckwith warns in an earlier post, melt rates on Greenland have doubled in the last 4 to 5 years, and melt rates on the Antarctica Peninsula have increased even faster. Based on the last several decades, melt rates have had a doubling period of around 7 years or so. If this trend continues, we can expect a sea level rise approaching 7 meters by 2070.

From: More than 2.5 m sea level rise by 2040

These are all indications that the pace of climate change is accelerating in many ways, the most dangerous one being ever larger methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor. As the image below shows, sea surface temperature anomalies are very high in the Arctic Ocean, indicating very high temperatures under the surface.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently said: “There are now – right now – serious food shortages taking place in places like Central America because regions are battling the worst droughts in decades, not 100-year events in terms of floods, in terms of fires, in terms of droughts – 500-year events, something unheard of in our measurement of weather.” Warning about looming catastrophe, Kerry adds: “Life as you know it on Earth ends. Seven degrees increase Fahrenheit (3.9°C), and we can't sustain crops, water, life under those circumstances.”

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

Post by Sam Carana.

Where we are - A climate system summary

by Paul Beckwith

Air

The presence of GHGs (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere is vital to sustain life on our planet. These GHGs trap heat and keep the global average surface temperature of the planet at about 15°C, versus a chilly -18°C, which would be our temperature without the GHGs.

We have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere, specifically of the concentrations of the GHGs. Concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased about 40% since the start of the industrial revolution (from a tight range between 180 to 280 ppm over at least the last million years) to 400 ppm. Concentrations of methane have increased by more than 2.5x since the start of the industrial revolution (from a tight range of 350 to 700 ppb) to over 1800 ppb. The additional heat trapped has warmed our planet by over 0.8°C over the last century, with most of that rise (0.6°C) occurring in the last 3 or 4 decades.

Oceans

Over 90% of the heat trapped on the surface of the planet is increasing the temperature of the ocean water. The increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere acidify the rainfall, and have increased the acidity of the oceans by about 40% in the last 3 to 4 decades (pH of the open ocean has dropped from 8.2 down to 8.05 on the logarithmic scale). An increased drop to a pH of 7.8 will prevent calcium based shells from forming, and threaten the entire food chain of the ocean. Changes in ocean currents, and vertical temperature profiles are leading to more stratification and less overturning which is required to transport nutrients to the surface for phytoplankton to thrive.

Global sea levels are presently rising at a rate of 3.4 mm per year, compared to a rate of about 2 mm per year a few decades ago. Melt rates on Greenland have doubled in the last 4 to 5 years, and melt rates on the Antarctica Peninsula have increased even faster. Based on the last several decades, melt rates have had a doubling period of around 7 years or so. If this trend continues, we can expect a sea level rise approaching 7 meters by 2070.

From: More than 2.5 m sea level rise by 2040

Land

Higher global average temperatures have increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by about 4% over the last several decades, and around 6% since the start of the industrial revolution. Changes in heat distribution with latitude from uneven heating with latitude has slowed the jet streams and caused them to become wavier and fractured, and has changed the statistics of weather. We now have higher frequencies, intensities, and longer duration extreme weather events and also a change in location of where these events occur.

Feedback loops

The sensitivity of the climate system to increased levels of GHG appears to be much higher than previously expected due to many powerful reinforcing feedbacks.

From: Arctic Warming due to Snow and Ice Demise

Arctic temperature amplification from exponentially declining sea ice and spring snow cover are the strongest feedbacks in our climate system today. The average albedo (reflectivity) of the Arctic region has decreased from 52% to a present day value of 48% over 3 or 4 decades. The increased absorption of energy in the Arctic has increased the temperature at high latitudes at rates up to 6 to 8x the global average temperature change. The reduced temperature difference between the Arctic and equator has reduced the west to east speed of the jet streams causing them to slow and become wavier and more fractured, and directly causing a large change in the statistics of our global weather.

Methane gas emissions have been rapidly rising in the Arctic region from the terrestrial permafrost and the continental shelf marine sediments, most notably on the ESAS (Eastern Siberia Arctic Shelf). The extremely potent ability of methane to warm the planet (global warming potential GWP is >150, 86, and 34 times for methane relative to carbon dioxide on a few year, several decade, and century timescale, respectively) makes increased emissions an extremely dangerous risk to our well-being on the planet.

My overall assessment

Our climate system is presently undergoing preliminary stages of abrupt climate change. If allowed to continue, the planet climate system is quite capable of undergoing an average global temperature increase of 5°C to 6°C over a decade or two. Precedence for changes at such a large rate can be found at numerous times in the paleo-records. From my chair, I conclude that it is vital that we slash greenhouse gas emissions and undergo a crash program of climate engineering to cool the Arctic region and keep the methane in place in the permafrost and ocean sediments.

Paul Beckwith

Paul Beckwith is part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. Paul teaches climatology/meteorology and does PhD research on 'Abrupt climate change in the past and present'. Paul holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life. Click here to view Paul's earlier posts at the Arctic-news blog.


Related

- What's wrong with the weather?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/07/whats-wrong-with-the-weather.html

- Arctic News: Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/polar-jet-stream-appears-hugely-deformed.html

Post by Sam Carana.

Escalating extreme weather events to hammer humanity

By Paul Beckwith

Extreme weather events are rocketing upwards in their frequency of occurrence, intensity, and duration and are impacting new regions that are unprepared. These events, such as torrential rains, are causing floods and damaging crops and infrastructure like roads, rail, pipelines, and buildings. Cities, states, and entire countries are being battered and inundated resulting in disruption to many peoples lives as well as enormous economic losses. As bad as this is, it is going to get much worse by at least 10 to 20 times. Why?

Greenhouse gas emissions from humans have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere. The optical absorption of infrared heat has increased in the atmosphere which raises temperature, and thus water vapor content, and therefore fuels more intense storms. The jet streams that guide these storms are slower and wavier and more fractured and cause our weather gyrations and weird behavior. Areas far north can get very warm, while areas far south can get very cold. Some areas get persistent drought. Then, the pattern can flip. The jet streams are much wavier in the north-south direction since the Arctic temperatures have warmed 5 to 8 times faster than the global average. This reduces the temperature difference between the Arctic and equator and basic physics forces the jets to slow and get wavier.

Why is the Arctic warming greatly amplified? The region is darkening and thus absorbing more sunlight, since the land-based snow cover in spring and the Arctic sea ice cover volume are both declining exponentially. The white snow and ice is being replaced by dark surfaces like the ocean and the tundra. The most detailed computer model on sea ice decline is a U.S. Naval Graduate School model, and it shows the sea ice cover could be gone by late summer in 2016. If this happens, the Arctic warming will rocket upwards, the jets will distort much more, and the extreme weather events will rocket upwards in frequency, amplitude, and duration and civilization will be hammered.

Paul Beckwith

Paul Beckwith is part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. Paul teaches climatology/meteorology and does PhD research on 'Abrupt climate change in the past and present'. Paul holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life. Below are Paul's earlier posts at the Arctic-news blog.

Abrupt Climate Change - by Paul Beckwith

by Paul Beckwith

Humans have benefited greatly from a stable climate for the last 11,000 years - roughly 400 generations. Not anymore. We now face an angry climate. One that we have poked in the eye with our fossil fuel stick and awakened. Now we must deal with the consequences. We must set aside our differences and prepare for what we can no longer avoid. And that is massive disruption to our civilizations.

In a nutshell, the logical chain of events occurring is as follows:

1. Greenhouse gases that humans are putting into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels are trapping extra heat in the earth system (distributed between the oceans (93%), the cryosphere (glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice for 3%), the earth surface (rocks, vegetation, etc. for 3%) and the atmosphere (only an amazingly low 1%). The oceans clearly get the lions share of the energy, and if that 1% heating the atmosphere varies there can be decades of higher or lower warming, as we have seen recently. This water vapor rises and cools condensing into clouds and releasing its stored latent heat which is increasing storm intensity.
   
2. (i)Rapidly declining Arctic sea ice (losing about 12% of volume per decade) and (ii)snow cover (losing about 22% of coverage in June per decade) and (iii)darkening of Greenland all cause more solar absorption on the surface and thus amplified Arctic warming (global temperatures have increased (on average) about 0.17^oC per decade, the Arctic has increased > 1^oC per decade, or about 6x faster)
   
3. Equator-to-Arctic temperature difference is thus decreasing rapidly
   
4. Less heat transfer occurs from equator to pole (via atmosphere, and thus jet streams become streakier and wavier and slower in west-to-east direction, and via ocean currents (like Gulf Stream, which slows and overruns continental shelf on Eastern seaboard of U.S.)
   
5. Storms (guided by jet streams) are slower and sticking and with more water content are dumping huge torrential rain quantities on cities and widespread regions at higher latitudes than is “normal”.
   
6. A relatively rare meteorological event called an “atmospheric river” is now much more common, and injects huge quantities of water over several days to specific regions, such as Banff (with water running downhill to Calgary) and Toronto and Colorado events.

The above is extracted from one of Paul's earlier posts.

Paul discusses more details in the videos below. Our abruptly changing climate system: where we are and where we are going.

Abrupt Climate Change - part 1

And the next part, Abrupt Climate Change - part 2

Extreme weather is like a sledgehammer repeatedly pounding away at the inaction, lethargy, and climate change denial that is prevalent in rich Western countries around the world.

Inevitably, the hammer pounding will increase in frequency, severity, duration, and spatial extent over the next few years until the denial crumbles, in spite of the annual one billion dollars in fossil fuel money that is paid to support fraud by hiding the truth on the threat that we all face. 

A tipping point in collective societal behaviour will occur, and humanity will finally initiate action, albeit frantically, to begin to deal with the largest problem ever faced in our history.

Paul Beckwith is a part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology. His PhD research topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life.

Our New Climate and Weather - part 2

by Paul Beckwith

continued from part 1

In North America we are about to experience a late January, 2014 weather event that will likely go down in the record books, at least for a few weeks until the next event. Such is life on our rapidly changing planet in Climate 2.0, or perhaps this would better be called the great abrupt climate change transition between Climate 1.0 (our old climate) and the new, much warmer Climate 2.0.

In any event, the jet stream is configuring into that two crest/two trough mode that I discussed above. An enormous plug of cold Arctic air is descending southward across North America with temperature anomalies 20 degrees C below normal (36 degrees F below normal). It likely reaches far enough south to enter into northern Mexico and to cover large parts of Florida and extend out into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, resulting in northern Florida dropping below freezing (see my YouTube video below).

For more commentary on above video, see the post Deep Freeze and Abrupt Climate Change

Meanwhile, in turn, almost the entire Arctic region is seeing huge positive temperature anomalies that are 20 degrees C above normal (36 degrees F above normal). This air is changing the Arctic circulation patterns, and although the Arctic air temperature is still below zero, it is so much warmer than normal that the thickening and area growth of sea ice is being severely curtailed. There is strong ice motion out of the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard which is carrying some of the thickest ridged ice just north of the Canadian archipelago out to warmer water and destruction. In the Bering Strait the ice motion is switching between transport of warm Pacific Ocean water into the Arctic Ocean and export of cold Arctic Ocean water out into the Pacific, leading to less ice formation outside the strait.

The easternmost and westernmost edges of North America are outside the jet stream trough, and being in the ridge on either side of the trough are experiencing record warm temperatures. Snow is minimal there, and lakes that would normally have frozen long ago are open water. Further south on the west coast, California is undergoing a record drought and the Sierra Nevada snow pack which feeds the rivers and reservoirs in the state is only at 15 to 20% of normal levels. And this is the normal rainy season for California, which is the breadbasket of the nation. If this drought continues, as it has for almost 3 years, it is very likely that food prices will increase substantially across North America.

Putting on my Engineering hat, it is very clear to me that the large temperature swings over short periods of time that occur as the jet stream troughs and ridges sweep past a fixed region such as a city are wreaking havoc on infrastructure. We have commonly been getting temperature swings of 40 degrees Celsius (72 degrees F) within a day or two. These swings usually cross zero, and result in torrential rain events followed by flash freezing and then large amounts of snow, or the inverse process occurs, often in a cycle over a week. Clearly buildings, roads, railroad tracks, and pipelines are under siege from these temperature swings, precipitation changes and repeated freeze/thaw cycles.

Consider a railroad track. The rails are basically two ribbons of steel of length L separated by width w that are held in place by spikes onto wooden railroad ties. Each section L is joined to adjacent sections with spacers. The tracks are designed for a nominal temperature range. At the high end temperature, the steel expands to its maximum length, and adjacent sections butt together at the join. At the low end temperature, the steel contracts and the gap between adjacent rails is at a maximum. As the daily temperature varies between the lows and highs, the rail expands and contracts. Similarly, for seasonal changes. All within design tolerances. What we are seeing now is a higher frequency of extreme temperature swings of 40 degrees C or larger (72 degrees F), which is greatly stressing the rail infrastructure. These large swings are stretching the limits of the design tolerances since they exceed the usual daily temperature ranges, and occur way faster than any seasonal change. In combination with the explosion of rail traffic from oil trains, the risk of derailment accidents has greatly increased, and we are seeing an enormous increase in derailments. We have also seen a large increase in the frequency, amplitude, duration, and spatial area of torrential rainfall events which have led to floods and extreme river flow rates which undercuts bridges and also leads to more rail derailments. Especially when the rail is submerged for extended periods of time, as occurred, for example in Colorado in late summer 2013.

Ditto with pipelines. Pipeline sections are attached to each other via welds or sleeves and during extreme temperature swings the expansion and contraction of concern is in the longitudinal direction of the pipe. The pipelines are usually buried a few meters under the ground, which can reduce the temperature variation during the atmospheric temperature swings, however where they cross rivers and streams they are exposed to the changing elements and river flows. They are also susceptible to flash freeze events in which large sections of the ground contract and lead to cracking and soil displacement. Water saturation levels in the soils has a large effect on pipeline stresses, and can undergo rapid changes from rapidly changing precipitation cycles.

We are all familiar with how roads fare under extensive freeze/thaw cycles. Even worse, the ice melting salt corrodes guardrails, signs, and posts and as cracks open up in the asphalt salty water percolates in and the freeze thaw cycles widen the cracks leading to potholes and road breakup. And that is in northern latitude regions that have a regular snow in winter climate. In more southern regions that are unaccustomed to snow, there is widespread use of concrete for road surfaces. When there are large temperature swings the concrete is more prone to cracking and it is more difficult to remove snow and ice from these roads, since there is a lack of snow removal equipment and salt in these regions, and the concrete is lighter in color and thus absorbs less solar energy than asphalt and thus stays colder.

The biggest problem that homeowners face in more southern latitudes from these deep freeze situations, apart from personal discomfort in poorly insulated homes, is water pipe freezing and rupturing. Leaving the water taps all partially open to ensure a trickle of water flow through the pipes alleviates a lot of this problem.

In summary, climate change caused extreme weather events are severely stressing infrastructure like roads, bridges, rail, pipelines, and buildings. Much of this infrastructure was built many years ago and upgrading and maintenance has been neglected due to postponed and reduced budgets; while traffic on rail, for example has exploded in volume and weight. We are now facing the consequences of accelerated climate change and the years of neglect of our aging infrastructure.

In the video below, Paul says more about the damage to railway tracks and pipelines.

Southern Hemisphere Climate Changes

In the video below, Paul Beckwith explains how declining Arctic sea ice is causing Australia to bake and Antarctic sea ice to grow.

to be continued

Our New Climate and Weather

by Paul Beckwith

The familiar global weather patterns that we, our parents, and our grandparents (and most of our distant ancestors, at least as far back as the last ice age remnants) have always experienced are no more. We have entered an abrupt climate change phase in which an energized water primed atmosphere and disrupted circulation patterns give rise to unfamiliar, massive and powerfully destructive storms, torrential rains, widespread heat waves and droughts, and less commonly but occasionally widespread cold spells.

Why is this happening now? Sophisticated Earth System computer Models (ESMs), summaries of state-of-the-art peer reviewed climate science (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC), and mainstream science have generally put the climate change threat out to the latter part of the century. Global data from all parts of the world, but most noticeably the Arctic shows that reality is quite different from these models and mainstream thinking.

Just by looking out the window much of humanity now senses that something is very different, and uncomfortably wrong in their particular region.

Depending on location, vegetation is drying out and burning, or being toppled by very high wind events, or oceans are invading upon coastlines, or rivers are overrunning banks or drying up or both, while rainfall deluges are inundating other regions. In fact some regions are vacillating between massive floods and massive droughts, or record high temperatures and record low temperatures, even on a weekly basis.

As crazy as things are now, clearly they are not bad enough to wake up the general population enough to vote down denier politicians and demand extensive governmental action on the problem. Not to worry, that action is a sure bet in the near future, the only question is will it happen next year, or in 3 years?

In the meantime, many of us are doing as much as we can to educate people on the dangers we face and speed up the understanding of climate reality process. As much as we do, ultimately it is the hammer of extreme weather, causing, for example global crop failures or taking out a few more cities in rich countries that will take the final credit for an abrupt tipping point in human behavior.

The key to the disruption in the climate system is the Arctic.

Human emissions have inexorably increased levels of carbon dioxide and methane (Greenhouse gases GHGs) in the atmosphere sufficiently to cause an incremental overall increase of global mean surface temperature by 0.8 degrees C over the last century. Over the last 3 decades, the GHGs have caused sufficient warming in the Arctic to melt enough land-covered snow and ocean covered ice such that the highly reflective surfaces have been replaced by dark underlying land and ocean greatly increasing sunlight absorption causing Arctic temperature amplification of 3x to 5x and higher.

This has melted permafrost on the land and on the shallow continental shelves and has increased Arctic methane emissions, which on a molecule-to-molecule basis cause warming >150x compared to carbon dioxide on a short timescale. Arctic temperature amplification has reduced the equator-to-Arctic temperature difference, which is responsible for setting up global circulation patterns on the rotating Earth. Thus, the high speed jet stream winds which circumvent the globe become slower, and wavier, and weather patterns change.

Extreme weather events become stronger, more frequent, of longer duration, and act on new regions. In effect, the climate background has changed, so the statistics of all weather events changes. When the ocean tide comes in all boats rise, when the climate system changes all weather events change.

So how does the North American freeze of early January, 2014 and the upcoming late January, 2014 freeze fit into this picture? In our familiar climate, the polar jet stream flowed mostly west to east (with small north-south deviations or waves, with typically 4 to 7 crests and troughs around the globe) separating cold dry Arctic air from lower latitude warmer moist air. The latitude of the jet moves southward in our winter and northward in our summer.

In our present climate the jet stream waviness has greatly increased and eastward average speed has decreased. Not only that, but in early January there were only two troughs (over North America and central Asia) and two crests (over Europe and the Pacific up through Alaska and the Bering Strait).

The troughs had temperatures 20 degrees C cooler than normal, while the crests had temperatures 20 degrees C warmer than normal. These large waves and slowing of the jet stream is directly responsible for the changes we have been experiencing in weather extremes. Cold or warm, depending on your location.

continued at part 2

Are Alberta’s Tar Sands prepared for a torrential rain event?

by Paul Beckwith

In recent months we have endured incredible tropical-equatorial-like torrential rain events occurring at mid-latitudes across the planet. For example, in North America we experienced intense rainfall in the Banff region of the Rockies from June 19th to 24th and the enormous volume of water moved downhill through the river systems taking out small towns and running into the heart of Calgary where it caused $5.3 billion dollars of infrastructure damage; the largest in Canadian history.

Next, it was Toronto’s turn, with 75 mm of rain falling from 5 to 6pm on July 8 (with up to 150 mm overall in some regions) leading to widespread flooding and $1.45 billion dollars in damages. As bad as these events were, they were dwarfed by the intense rainfalls hitting the state of Colorado from Sept 9th to 15th.

Rainfall amounts that would normally fall over 6 months to a year were experienced in less than a week. Widespread flash floods, landslides, and torrents of water ripped apart roads, fracking equipment and pipelines on (at least) hundreds of fossil fuel sites (mostly ignored by mainstream media) (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/19/media-ignores-damaged-oil-and-gas-tanks-colorado-floods). The level of destruction was simply horrifying, as captured by a man with a plane and a camera. But we have no grounds for complaint, since the widespread flooding in central Europe from May 30th to June 6th caused a much larger $22 billion in damages.

So what is happening? Why are we experiencing so many of these severe weather flooding events that are supposed to only occur every 1000 years or so? Will they keep occurring? What city will be hit next? Can the Alberta tar sands be hit by such an event? What would be the implications?

Abrupt Climate Change In Real-Time

Humans have benefited greatly from a stable climate for the last 11,000 years - roughly 400 generations. Not anymore. We now face an angry climate. One that we have poked in the eye with our fossil fuel stick and awakened. Now we must deal with the consequences. We must set aside our differences and prepare for what we can no longer avoid. And that is massive disruption to our civilizations.

In a nutshell, the logical chain of events occurring is as follows:

1. Greenhouse gases that humans are putting into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels are trappingextra heat in the earth system (distributed between the oceans (93%), the cryosphere (glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice for 3%), the earth surface (rocks, vegetation, etc. for 3%) and the atmosphere (only an amazingly low 1%). The oceans clearly get the lions share of the energy, and if that 1% heating the atmosphere varies there can be decades of higher or lower warming, as we have seen recently. This water vapor rises and cools condensing into clouds and releasing its stored latent heat which is increasing storm intensity.
   
2. (i)Rapidly declining Arctic sea ice (losing about 12% of volume per decade) and (ii)snow cover (losing about 22% of coverage in June per decade) and (iii)darkening of Greenland all cause more solar absorption on the surface and thus amplified Arctic warming (global temperatures have increased (on average) about 0.17^oC per decade, the Arctic has increased > 1^oC per decade, or about 6x faster)
   
3. Equator-to-Arctic temperature difference is thus decreasing rapidly
   
4. Less heat transfer occurs from equator to pole (via atmosphere, and thus jet streams become streakier and wavier and slower in west-to-east direction, and via ocean currents (like Gulf Stream, which slows and overruns continental shelf on Eastern seaboard of U.S.)
   
5. Storms (guided by jet streams) are slower and sticking and with more water content are dumping huge torrential rain quantities on cities and widespread regions at higher latitudes than is “normal”.
   
6. A relatively rare meteorological event called an “atmospheric river” is now much more common, and injects huge quantities of water over several days to specific regions, such as Banff (with water running downhill to Calgary) and Toronto and Colorado events.

It is well past the time that politicians and governments need to act to address these issues. This breakdown of the global atmospheric circulation pattern is well underway now, with a global average temperature only 0.8^oC above the pre-industrial revolution levels. With extreme weather events this terrible now, it is highly irrational, in fact reckless, to continue to have global meetings and discussions about whether or not 2^oC is safe. Only 0.8^oC is wreaking havoc on global infrastructure today. As climate change proceeds and accelerates and we move further from the stable state that we are familiar with (“old climate”) to a much warmer world (“new climate”) we will experience worsening weather extremes and a huge “whiplashing” of events (throughout our present “transition period”).

For a notion of whiplashing, consider the Mississippi River. There were record river flow rates from high river basin rainfall in 2011, followed by record drought and record low river water levels in December, 2012 making it necessary for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to hydraulically break apart rock on the riverbed to keep the countries vital economic transportation link open to barge traffic. Then, 6 months later, the river was back up to record levels. Incredible swings of fortune.

Mitigation at a global level is dysfunctional and inadequate

Adaption has not worked out too well for Calgary, or Toronto, or Colorado, or numerous other places. Let us not be surprised when a similar torrential rain event hits Ottawa, or Vancouver, or even the Alberta tar sand tailing ponds. In Alberta, tailings ponds would be breached and the toxic waters would overflow the Athabasca River and carry the pollutants up into the north to exit into the Arctic Ocean. Such an event would be catastrophic to the environment and economy of Canada.

How can this risk be ignored? Will the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report AR5 released on September 27th once again be ignored by society?

Paul Beckwith is a part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology. His PhD research topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life.

Stop All New Fossil Fuel Megaprojects

Why is Obama not rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline now?

In light of Obama's 42 minute climate change speech, his understanding on the lack of permanent jobs created, as well as his knowledge on the corrupted environmental assessment report generated by pipeline advocates, one has to wonder what the delay is for? Clearly, Obama will reject the pipeline or completely lose support and credibility and destroy his long-term legacy.

So why the delay? For one thing, other pipelines are being planned and designed and pretty much slipped under the radar. Like the reversal of Enbridge Line 9 and conversion from natural gas to dilbit and a capacity of 1.1 million barrels per day, much higher than the 0.85 mbd from Keystone XL. By delaying on the Keystone XL, Obama is keeping pressure off these other projects which are threatening to slip in under the radar while people opposed are preoccupied with the Keystone XL.

This needs to change. People opposed to Keystone XL need to ramp up their opposition to all pipeline projects, in fact to all new fossil fuel megaprojects, including coal and pipelines and tankers and also to fracking. The reason is that climate change has moved into a much more rapid and abrupt regime, whereby massive extreme weather events like torrential rains cause floods in some regions, and long-term persistent droughts occur in other regions, all at the whim of a wavy and stuck jet stream.

Paul Beckwith is a part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology. His PhD research topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life.

Related

- The Social Tipping Point - by Paul Beckwith
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-social-tipping-point.html

- The Obama Climate Plan: Disappointing and Hopeless - by Peter Carter

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-obama-climate-plan-disappointing-and-hopeless.html

- Comprehensive and Effective Climate Plan - by Sam Carana

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/comprehensive-and-effective-climate-plan.html

Toward Genuinely Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate

The post 'Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate' recently appeared at SkepticalScience, in response to the recent publication in Nature of 'Vast Costs of Arctic Change', by Gail Whiteman, Chris Hope, and Peter Wadhams.

Below are Paul Beckwith's comments that were recently submitted at that post. The text by SkepticalScience is in italics. Paul's comments are in red.

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SkepticalScience: “Here at Skeptical Science, there is an ongoing effort to combat disinformation from those who maintain that climate change is a non-issue or non-reality. From time to time, however, individuals or groups overhype the impacts of climate change beyond the realm of plausibility. Some of this is well-intentioned but misguided. For those who advocate climate literacy or for scientists who engage with the public, it is necessary to call out this stuff in the same manner as one would call out a scientist who doesn’t think that the modern CO2 rise is due to human activities.

Many overblown scenarios or catastrophes seem to involve methane in the Arctic in some way. There are even groups out there declaring a planet-wide emergency because of catastrophic, runaway feedbacks, involving the interplay between high latitude methane sources and sea ice.”

Paul Beckwith: The above two paragraphs set the tone of this discourse. AMEG (Arctic Methane Emergency Group) is unjustly framed in this introduction as a fringe group using such terms as “overhype”, “beyond realm of plausibility”, “overblown scenarios or catastrophes”, “planet-wide emergency”. This is the complete opposite of the truth. AMEG was founded based on a meeting in October, 2011 in the U.K. and I joined in December, 2011. We are a group of concerned professionals with a varied background including climate scientists, engineers, doctors, moviemakers, economists, journalists.

We have studied the Arctic, methane, sea ice, and climate change as a group since that time, and individually for much longer. We base our work and analysis on observations, not on models.

The facts on the ground and ocean in the Arctic region speak for themselves. The PIOMAS work, which has been substantiated independently by CryoSat satellite data, show that the sea ice volume is trending downwards exponentially and if that trend continued would reach zero around 2015 or 2016. Trending down even faster is the May and June Arctic snow cover, as measured clearly by Rutgers data. Methane levels in the Arctic have increased significantly over the last several years. In fact, the mainstream scientific viewpoint was that the seafloor over the ESAS (Eastern Siberia Arctic Shelf) was impermeable to methane outgassing. Then Shakhova, Yurganov, and other Russian scientists measured outgassing plumes tens of meters in diameter one year expanding to kilometers in diameter the very next year. Flask measurements in Barrow, Alaska and Svalbaard indicated local levels of >2100 ppb and AIRS satellite measurements over the last decade have shown greatly increase levels of methane in the last few years. This is all observation, and not modeled by anybody. In fact, higher methane emissions have been reported along the Arctic coastlines, presumably from enhanced wave action due to larger wave action from the increased ice-free ocean.

Also, higher emissions have been measured elsewhere from continental shelves, for example off the east coast of North America from warm Gulf Stream water that has shifted eastward over the shelves, warming ocean temperatures several degrees.

Thus, the “radical” or “fringe” or “out-there” view is not from AMEG, quite the opposite. Based on the precautionary principle, it is imperative that so called “mainstream” science examine this data without preconceptions that it takes centuries or millennia for methane to outgas. It is unfathomable to AMEG and many others that main-stream science are behaving like “methane denialists” when the observations are clearly undermining such out-of-hand rejection, based on inaccurate models that are clearly missing feedbacks. In fact the situation is so ridiculous that the IPCC is not even considering methane as a strong feedback in their next report.

People on the street are now recognizing that the weather extremes are moving off the charts in terms of frequency, severity, and spatial extent (mostly for extensive long duration droughts, and also torrential rains causing floods). They are starting to recognize that the collapse in Arctic albedo from declining snow cover and sea ice loss is greatly amplifying the warming in the Arctic. This obviously lowers the temperature gradient between the equator and North Pole which via simple physical laws slows the jet streams making them wavier and stickier. This changing global circulation, combined with 4% higher water vapor in the atmosphere is causing these weather extremes.

Things are happening that have never been observed before in human history. Like the rate of decline of sea ice and snow cover, the extensive cracking of sea ice this March-2013, the “hole” forming near the north pole from relatively weak cyclones, the massive, long duration cyclone at the beginning of August-2012, and the list goes on and on. AMEG being extreme? Hardly, more like science compartmentalization and specialization being myopic to the collection of system changes that are screaming out that the climate system has entered a period of abrupt change that has not been seen before in human history, but has happened many times in the paleorecords. In fact, rates of change now are at least 10x higher than any seen in the geologic record.

SkepticalScience: About a week ago, a Nature article by Gail Whiteman, Chris Hope, and Peter Wadhams came out analyzing the "Vast Costs of Arctic Change." The Whiteman article is an honest and thoughtful commentary about the economic impacts of a changing Arctic climate. I will not comment on their economic modeling here, but rather on a key scenario assumption that they use which calls for vast increases in Arctic-sourced methane to the atmosphere. In this case, they have in mind a very rapid pulse of 50 Gigatons of methane emanating from the East Siberian Shelf (see image, including Laptev and East Siberian sea). Note: 1 GtCH4= 1 Gigaton of methane = 1 billion tons of methane. Whiteman et al. essentially assume that this "extra methane" will be put in the atmosphere on timescales of years or a couple decades. This article has been widely publicized because it calls for an average of 60 trillion dollars on top of all other climate change costs. Since this was discussed in a prediction context rather than as a thought experiment, it demands analysis of evidence.

In this article, I will argue that there is no compelling evidence for any looming methane spike. Other scientists have spoken out against this scenario as well, and I will encompass some of their arguments into this piece. In summary, the reason a huge feedback is unlikely is because of the long timescale required for global warming to reach some of the largest methane hydrate reservoirs (defined later) (Paul Beckwith: no methane was expected from ESAS since seafloor was thought to be impermeable, until it was measured to rapidly outgas from one year to the next), and because no evidence exists for such an extreme methane concentration sensitivity to climate in the past record (Paul Beckwith: methane pulses released over several years or a few decades is not detectable in ice cores since bubble closure below firn takes about 50 years or more).Permafrost feedbacks are of concern, but there is no basis for assuming a dramatic "tipping point" in the atmospheric methane concentration (Paul Beckwith: no basis for this statement since observations show large increase in methane).

The Methane Tour

Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas. It absorbs thermal energy that the Earth is trying to shed into outer space, and can thus warm the surface of the planet. Its concentration in the modern atmosphere is a little bit shy of 2 parts per million by volume (ppm), compared to roughly 0.72 ppm in 1750 or 0.38 ppm in typical glacial conditions. Like CO2, methane has not risen to modern day concentrations during the entirety of the now ~800,000 year long ice core record.

So what about Whiteman's scenario?

For perspective on how big 50 GtCH4 is, I've used data from David Archer's online methane model to see how atmospheric methane concentrations would change in response to such a big carbon injection. You can do this as a back-of-envelope calculation by noting that 1 ppm is about 2.8 GtCH4 if it all stays as methane and isn't removed, but this model lets you see the decay timescale too. For methane, the decay back to original concentrations occurs within decades, whereas for CO2 it takes millennia (CH4 is rapidly oxidized by the hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere). Therefore, CO2 dominates the long-term climate change picture but the methane spike can induce very large transitory effects. (Paul Beckwith: keep in mind that the methane lifetime varies greatly depending on the availability of the hydroxyl radical. On average it is 12 years, however in dry regions like the Arctic with little water vapor it is longer, while at moist equatorial regions it is shorter).

I've run two scenarios in which the 50 GtCH4 injection takes 1 year and 10 years to complete (red and blue lines, respectively). The model starts with pre-industrial CH4 concentrations in years -10 through zero. The modern concentration of methane is shown as a horizontal orange line.



Everything having to do methane in the ice core record resides below the orange line in Figure 1 (at least within the resolution of the cores). So we're potentially talking about a very big change, which the Whiteman article contends is likely to be emitted fairly soon and should have implications for Arctic policy. (Paul Beckwith: This graph clearly demonstrates that if glacial ice bubble closure takes 50 years, then the pulse will not be captured. Also, the molecular weight of CH4 is 16 compared to 30 or so for air (mostly N2) so the methane does not stay around the surface for long).

For many, the primary concern about “big” abrupt changes in atmospheric CH4 stems from the large quantity of CH4 stored as methane hydrate or in permafrost in the Arctic region. These terms are defined below. It should be noted that globally, wetlands are the largest single methane source to the modern atmosphere. Most of that contribution is from the tropics and not from high latitudes (even if the Arctic was to start pumping harder). The Denman et al., 2007 carbon cycle chapter in the last IPCC report is a useful reference. (Paul Beckwith: methane from wetlands in tropics has short lifetime due to extremely large quantities of water and thus hydroxyl ions in that region, as opposed to methane from the Arctic in much drier conditions)

Nonetheless, the Arctic is a region that is quite dynamic and is changing rapidly. The high latitudes are currently a CO2 sink (Paul Beckwith: this cannot be correct, since CO2 concentrations are higher in the Arctic than the global values measured at Mauna Loa, for example) and CH4 source in the modern atmosphere, and it’s not implausible that the effectiveness of the sink could diminish (or reverse) or that the methane source could enhance in the future, since we expect a transition to a warmer, wetter climate with an extended thawing season. This makes the carbon budget in the Arctic a “hot” place for research.

In these discussions, it is important to clarify what sort of methane source we're talking about.

Methane hydrate is a solid substance that forms at low temperatures / high pressures in the presence of sufficient methane. It is an ice-like substance of frozen carbon, occurring in deep permafrost soils, marine continental margins, and also in deeper ocean bottom sediments. It's also very concentrated (a cubic foot of methane hydrate contains well over 100 times the same volume of methane gas).

On the decade-to-century timescale, the liberation of methane from the marine hydrate reservoir (or the deep hydrates on land) should be well insulated from anthropogenic climate change. Deep ocean responses by methane are a very slow response (many centuries to millennia, Archer et al., 2009). Methane released in deep water also needs to evacuate the water column and get to the atmosphere in order to have a climate impact, although much of it should get eaten up by micro-organisms before it gets the chance. These issues are discussed in a review paper by O’Connor et al., 2010. (Paul Beckwith: Methane response in deep ocean is not always slow, thus this section is very misleading. Underwater landslides from slope instability or earthquakes are know to have resulting in large methane pulses many times in the paleorecords. For example, Storegga off Norway or off New Zealand, there are extensive pockmarks on the ocean floor indicating abrupt episodic events. The mainstream view that methane outgassing from deep water regions does not enter the atmosphere. If release is slow that is correct, however rapid outbursts overwhelm the micro-organisms and result in large amounts of methane entering the atmosphere. Even slower releases from deep water off Svalbard have been observed recently to enter the atmosphere; another unexpected development).

There’s also carbon in near-surface permafrost, which is the more vulnerable carbon pool during this century. Permafrost is frozen soil (perennial sub-0°C ground), and can also encompass the sub-sea permafrost on the shelves of the Arctic Ocean. This includes the eastern Siberian shelf, a very shallow shelf region (only ~10-20 m deep, and very broad, extending a distance of 400– 800 km from the shoreline). This is a bit of a special case. These subsea deposits formed during glacial times, when sea levels were lower and the modern-day seafloor was instead exposed to the cold atmosphere. The ground then became submerged as sea levels rose (going into the warmer Holocene). The rising seas have been warming the deposits for thousands of years. Because of their exposure during the Last Glacial Maximum, the shelves may be almost entirely underlain by permafrost from the coastline all the way down to a water depth of tens or even a hundred meters (e.g., Rachold et al., 2007 and this USGS page).

There's actually no good evidence of shallow hydrate on the Siberian shelves, even though there are substantial quantities of subsea permafrost. Hydrate may exist deeper down however, more than 50 meters below the seafloor. The stability of these hydrates is sustained by the existence of permafrost, and it's not quite clear to what extent hydrate can also be stored within the permafrost layer. (Paul Beckwith: Permafrost people have an over-reliance on uniform slab models which examine time taken for heat to propogate through the slabs to melt the deep permafrost. They severely underestimate the fracturing and nonuniform nature of the permafrost, presence of taliks, etc. All that is needed is one weak spot or fracture region and heat can transfer downward much faster and further than the models suggest. Similar slab models are used to estimate glacial ice melting and they have clearly been incorrect and completely underestimate the rates of melting from dynamic effects and Moulin pathways, for example.)

The estimates of the amount of methane in these various Arctic reservoirs are very uncertain. Ballpark numbers are a couple thousand gigatons of carbon (GtC) stored in hydrates in global marine sediments (e.g., Archer et al., 2009) of which a couple hundred gigatons of carbon are in the Arctic Ocean basin, and between 1000-2000 GtC in permafrost soil carbon stocks (e.g., Tarnocai et al., 2009) after you include the deeper deposits. For comparison, there is a bit over 800 GtC in the atmosphere, of which about 5 Gt is in the form of methane, and estimated ~5000 GtC in the remaining fossil fuel reserve. These numbers seem big compared to the atmosphere, but for methane direct comparison isn't too relevant unless you put it in rapidly, since it has such a short lifetime in the atmosphere. Large amounts of CO2, in contrast, last much longer.

A couple years ago, Shakhova et al. (2010a) reported extensive methane venting in the eastern Siberian shelf and suggested that the subsea permafrost could become unstable in a future warmer Arctic. Shakhova et al (2010b) cite ~1400 Gt in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which comprises ~25% of the Arctic continental shelf and most of the subsea permafrost. Shakhova et al (2010c) ran through a few different pathways in which they argued for 50 GtCH4 release to the atmosphere either in a 1-5 year belch or over a 50-yr smooth emission growth, which they suggest, “significantly increases the probability of a climate catastrophe.” This assessment was the foundation for the concern in the recent Whiteman Nature article, linked at the top.

The physical mechanism outlined by some of these authors is related to the rapid reduction in Arctic summer sea ice observed over the last few decades, which allows for greater amounts of solar radiation to penetrate the waters around the Arctic shelf. Warming water propagates down in the well-mixed layers tens of meters to the seabed, and might melt frozen sediments underneath. Because the shelf in this region is shallow (compared to other regions), one doesn't need to wait a long time for the seafloor to feel the atmosphere-surface forcing, and methane leakage might have an easier escape path to the atmosphere. Allegedly, this has been leading to an acceleration of methane flux.

Responses from Scientists

As a response to the first paper from Shakhova on enhanced methane fluxes, Petrenko et al (2010) criticized the authors for misunderstanding several of their references and primarily for the logical implications of their conclusions. For example,

“A newly discovered CH4 source is not necessarily a changing source, much less a source that is changing in response to Arctic warming. Shakhova et al. do acknowledge these distinctions, but in these times of enhanced scrutiny of climate change science, it is important to communicate all evidence to the scientific community and the public clearly and accurately”

(Paul Beckwith: Examination of the methane concentrations in the atmosphere in the Arctic region from AIRS satellite data over a decade or so shows an obvious large increase in the amount of methane, and has been corroborated with flask measurements at locations across the Arctic, namely Barrow, Alaska and Svalbard. How is this not a changing source?)

Another paper, Dmitrenko et al (2011) reinforced this statement and came to the conclusion that there is currently no evidence that Arctic shelf hydrate emissions have increased due to global warming. This is also discussed in the review article by O'Connor et al (2010, linked above). (Paul Beckwith: Again, does one trust a direct observation or a conclusion from a paper? Obviously the direct observation.)

The work done by the Dmitrenko paper shows that although the changing Arctic atmosphere has led to warmer temperatures throughout the water column (over the eastern Siberian shelf coastal zone), it takes a very long time for the permafrost feedback at the bed to respond to this signal. They noted that the deepening of the permafrost table should only have been on the order of 1 meter over the last several decades, which does not permit a rapid destabilization of methane hydrate.  (Paul Beckwith: Deepening of the permafrost table of 1 meter over several decades is based on a slab model and let to the erroneous mainstream view that the seafloor over the ESAS was impermeable to methane release. Measurements show otherwise.)

It is important to emphasize that simple point source emission estimates are not often suitable for determining changed sources and sinks over the last few decades, and thus don't tell you how that translates into atmospheric concentration. This should be kept in mind when seeing dramatic videos of methane venting from a shelf or exploding lake, which might not actually have much to do with global warming. (Paul Beckwith: This is a very alarming view, and would fit in fine on any of numerous climate denial websites. Rapid methane emissions in the Arctic are what they are. Call a spade a spade.)

In 2008, there was a comprehensive report on Abrupt Climate Change from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which is a bit dated but nonetheless makes a statement reflecting most of current scientific thinking. Quoting Ch. 5 Brook et al (2008):

"Destabilization of hydrates in permafrost by global warming is unlikely over the next few centuries (Harvey and Huang, 1995). No mechanisms have been proposed for the abrupt release of significant quantities of methane from terrestrial hydrates (Archer, 2007). Slow and perhaps sustained release from permafrost regions may occur over decades to centuries from mining extraction of methane from terrestrial hydrates in the Arctic (Boswell, 2007), over decades to centuries from continued erosion of coastal permafrost in Eurasia (Shakova [sic] et al., 2005), and over centuries to millennia from the propagation of any warming 100 to 1,000 meters down into permafrost hydrates (Harvey and Huang, 1995)" (Paul Beckwith: Again, slab model thinking. Episodic events like landslides negate these claims, as does fractures and other weakspots in the slabs which allow pathways for huge heatflow. A good analogy is polyanas in sea ice that allow for enormous heat flow between the ocean and the atmosphere in a sea ice field.)

Paleo-Analogs

One of the primary reasons we don't think there's as much methane sensitivity to warming as has been proposed by Shakhova, and argued for in the Whiteman Nature article, is because there's no evidence for it in the paleoclimate record.  This has been a point made by Gavin Schmidt on Twitter (a compilation of his many tweets on the topic here) but the objections to the Nature assumptions have been further echoed in recent days by other scientists working on the Arctic methane issue (e.g., here, here).

One can argue from a process-based and observations-based approach that we don't understand everything about Arctic methane feedback dynamics, which is fair. Nonetheless, the methane changes on the scale being argued by Whiteman et al. should have been seen in the early Holocene (when Summer Northern Hemispheric solar radiation was about 40 W/m2 higher than today at 60 degrees North, 7000-9000 years ago). (Paul Beckwith: Earth tilt was larger, so Winter Northern Hemispheric solar radiation was about 40 W/m2 lower than today at 60 degrees North. Thus, the ice formed much more quickly and much thicker in the winter back then. Also, at night much more heat was radiated out to space in the lower GHG world then as compared to our 400 ppm levels today). Even larger anomalies occurred during the Last Interglacial period between 130,000 to 120,000 years ago, though with complicated regional evolution (Bakker et al., 2013). 

Both of these times were marked by warmer Arctic regions in summer without a methane spike. It's also known pretty well (see here) that summertime Arctic sea ice was probably reduced in extent or seasonally free compared to the modern during the early Holocene, offering a suitable test case for the hypothesis of rapid, looming methane release. (Paul Beckwith: Incorrect, the summertime Arctic is not believed to be seasonally ice free during these periods. The last time this happened was likely 2 or 3 million years ago.)

It should be noted that Peter Wadhams did offer a response recently to the criticisms of the Whitehead Nature piece (Wadham is a co-author) but did not address why this idea has not been borne out paleoclimatically.

Yesterday, an objection to the paleoclimate comparison cropped up in the Guardian suggesting that the early Holocene or Last Interglacial analogs are not suitable pieces of evidence against rapid methane release. They aren't perfect analogs, but the argument does not seem compelling. (Paul Beckwith: Colder winters in the early Holocene and Last Interglacial and much colder nights (in summers and winters then) meant much thicker and extensive ice formation in winters, and slower melting at night, respectively. Compelling arguments.) The Northeast Siberian shelf regions have been exposed many times to the atmosphere during the Pleistocene when sea levels were lower (and not covered by an ice sheet since at least the Late Saalian, before 130,000 years ago, e.g., here). As mentioned before, when areas such as the Laptev shelf and adjacent lowlands were exposed, ice-rich permafrost sediments were deposited. The deposits become degraded after they are submerged (when sea levels increase again), resulting in local flooding and seabed temperature changes an order of magnitude greater than what is currently happening. Moreover, the permafrost responses have a lag time and are still responding to early Holocene forcing (some overviews in e.g., Romanovskii and Hubberten, 2001; Romanovskii et al., 2004; Nicolsky et al., 2012). A book chapter by Overduin et al., 2007 overviews the history of this region since the Last Glacial Maximum. These texts also suggest that large amounts of submarine permafrost may have existed going back at least 400,000 years. It therefore does not seem likely that the seafloor deposits will be exposed to anything in the coming decades that they haven't seen before. (Paul Beckwith: What is unique now is the extremely high concentration levels of CO2 (400ppm) and CH4 (>1900ppb). These high concentrations trap the heat in the troposphere 24/7. Thus, at night heat loss is limited by the GHG blanket. At all previous times the GHG blanket was much weaker, with CO2 ranging from 180 to 280 ppm and CH4 ranging from 350 to 700 ppb, or so. This makes an enormous difference.)

What about other times in the past? Fairly fast methane changes did occur during the abrupt climate change events embedded within the last deglaciation (e.g., Younger Dryas), just before the Holocene when the climate was still fluctuating around a state colder than today. These CH4 changes were slower than the abrupt climate changes themselves, and have been largely attributed to tropical and boreal wetland responses rather than high latitude hydrate anomalies. Marine hydrate destabilization as a major driver of glacial-interglacial CH4 variations has also been ruled out through the inter-hemispheric gradient in methane and hydrogen isotopes (e.g., Sowers, 2006) (Paul Beckwith: Episodic events like landslides, as mentioned before, cannot be discounted. In fact geological events like landslides occur at much higher frequencies when there is a rapid temperature transition, as covered extensively in Bill McGuire’s new textbook. Also, the text on “The Clathrate Gun hypothesis” cannot be completely discounted.)

To be fair, we don't have good atmospheric methane estimates during warmer climates that prevailed beyond the ice core record, going back tens of millions of years. Methane is brought up a lot in the context of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 55 million years ago). During this time, proxy records show global warming at the PETM (similar to what modern models would give for a quadrupling of CO2), extending to the deep ocean and lasting for thousands of years. In addition, there were substantial amounts of carbon released. It may very well be that isotopically light carbon came from a release of some 3,000 GtC of land-based organic carbon, rather than a destabilization of methane hydrates, although this is a topic of debate and ongoing research (see e.g., Zeebe et al., 2009; Dickens et al., 2011).

It's also important to emphasize that any destabilization of oceanic methane hydrates at the PETM, or any other time period, would imply that the carbon release is a feedback to some ocean warming that occurred first- perhaps on the order of 1000 years beforehand. Furthermore, once methane was in the atmosphere, it would oxidize to CO2 on timescales significantly shorter than the PETM itself (decades.) Unfortunately, there is no bullet-proof answer right now for what caused the PETM, but rather several hypotheses that are consistent with proxy interpretation. However, methane cannot be the only story.

The Role of Methane in Climate (Change)

To be clear, CH4 is important as we go forward, and is already a key climate forcing agent behind CO2 (coming in at ~0.5 W/m2 radiative forcing since pre-industrial times). Additionally, methane is quite reactive in the atmosphere, and the effect of other things like tropospheric ozone, aerosols, or stratospheric water vapor are partly slaved to whatever is happening to methane (Shindell et al., 2009). This means methane emitted has a bigger collective impact on climate than if you just do the radiative forcing calculation by comparing methane concentration changes to what it was in 1750. (Paul Beckwith: It is important to point out an enormous misconception in public and scientific reports on methane regarding the Global Warming Potential (GWP). A number in the low 20s is almost always reported (22x, 25x…) and is based on a 100 year timescale. On a 20 year timescale, methane GWP is around 70x, and on a 1 or 2 year timescale the GWP is >150x. Clearly, in terms of methane in the Arctic sourced from marine or terrestrial permafrost the number of significance to sea ice and localized warming is 150x.)

Permafrost thawing is also going to be important in the coming century (this is a good paper), and the uncertainties pretty much go one way on this. There's not much wiggle room to argue that permafrost will reduce CH4/CO2 concentrations in the future. This is also likely to be a sustained release rather than one big catastrophic event. For example, permafrost was not included in Lenton (2008) as a "tipping point" for precisely the reason that there's no evidence for any "switch" of rapid behavior change. (Paul Beckwith: Exclusion of methane as a “tipping element” in this paper by the “experts” in 2008 was based on rates of change based on slab models, which recent observations of emissions has clearly invalidated). Much of the carbon is also likely to be in the form of CO2 to the atmosphere, and even implausible thought experiments of catastrophic methane release (see David Archer's post at RealClimate) give you comparable results in the short-term as to what CO2 is going to do for a long time.

Conclusion

The observed methane venting from the East Siberian shelf sea-floor to the atmosphere is probably not a new component of the Arctic methane budget. Furthermore, warming of the Arctic waters and sea ice decline will likely impact subsea permafrost on longer timescales, rather than the short term. (Paul Beckwith: Is this author so sure of this as to be willing to stake the stability/instability of the entire global circulation system on this?)

Methane feedbacks in the Arctic are going to be important for future climate change, just like the direct emissions from humans. This includes substantial regions of shallow permafrost in the Arctic, which is already going appreciable change. Much larger changes involving hydrate may be important longer-term. Nonetheless, these feedbacks need to be kept in context and should be thought of as one of the many other carbon cycle feedbacks, and dynamic responses, that supplement the increasing anthropogenic CO2 burden to the atmosphere. There is no evidence that methane will run out of control and initiate any sudden, catastrophic effects. (Paul Beckwith: There is no evidence that methane will not run out of control, in light of large increases of concentrations in recent years).  There's certainly no runaway greenhouse. Instead, chronic methane releases will supplement the primary role of CO2. Eventually some of this methane oxidizes into CO2, so if the injection is large enough, it can add extra CO2 forcing onto the very long term evolution of global climate, over hundreds to thousands of years.


Errata Update SkepticalScience: Gavin Schmidt let me know that in the first version of this post, I used gigatons of carbon instead of gigatons of methane. I mistakingly read the Shakhova paper as an injection of carbon. Since the molecular weight of carbon is 12 g/mol, and CH4 is 16 g/mol, then 1 GtC=1.33 GtCH4. The figure in the post has been revised accordingly and doesn't impact the argument here.


Related

- Arctic Methane Release: "Economic Time Bomb"
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/arctic-methane-release-economic-time-bomb.html

- Methane Hydrates
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/04/methane-hydrates.html

- Arctic Methane FAQ
http://arcticmethane.blogspot.com/p/faq.html


- Listen to Paul Beckwith speak on Gorilla-radio.com
http://www.gorilla-radio.com/audio/Gorilla_Radio_2012-2013-08-13-24647.mp3