An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 on the Richter scale hit the Greenland Sea near Svalbard on October 28, 2013.
[ Earthquake indicated by orange dot - click on image to enlarge ]
For a long time, huge sea surface temperature anomalies have shown up in the area where the earthquake hit. The image below compares the situation before and after the earthquake hit.
[ click on image to enlarge ]
These huge sea surface temperature anomalies were discussed before, in the September 19, 2013, post Is the North Pole now ice-free?
This post mentions that sea surface temperatures in some spots close to Svalbard are far higher than even in the waters closer to the Atlantic Ocean. In some of these spots, sea surface temperatures are well over 10°C (50°F).
The post continues: Where does this heat come from? These hot spots could be caused by undersea volcanic activity; this is the more dangerous as this area has seen methane bubbling up from destabilized hydrates before; the dangers of this situation have been discussed repeatedly, e.g. in the April 2011 post Runaway Global Warming.
Indeed, the big danger is large abrupt release of methane from destabilized hydrates. At the moment, the amount of methane entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean is already huge, as illustrated by the image below that shows high methane readings over the past few days.
The image below shows a lot of methane over the Arctic Ocean on September 19, 2013 (pm).
Very worrying are the high methane readings close to Gakkel Ridge, the divergent fault line at the center of the Arctic Ocean, as earlier discussed in the post Methane Release caused by Earthquakes.
Furthermore very worrying are the high methane readings in between Greenland and Novaya Zemlya that coincide with high sea surface temperatures in that area. As discussed in the earlier post Is the North Pole no ice-free?, there are hot spots in the Arctic Ocean where sea surface temperatures are well over 10°C (50°F), which could be caused by undersea volcanic activity; this is the more dangerous as the area has seen methane bubbling up from destabilized hydrates.
For reference, images are added below of sea surface temperatures (top) and sea surface temperature anomalies (underneath) for September 19, 2013, showing sea surface temperatures recorded close to Svalbard that are far higher than even in the waters closer to the Atlantic Ocean.
Also for reference, highest mean and peak methane readings up to September 19, 2013, are added below.
Over the past month or so, huge patches with temperature anomalies of over 20 degrees Celsius have been forming over the Arctic.
The three images below show such patches stretch out from Svalbard to Novaya Zemlya (top), north of Eastern Siberia (middle) and over West Greenland and Baffin Bay (bottom).
How these patches with warm air developed is further illustrated by the animation below, which goes from February 12, 2013, to March 18, 2013.
Methane locked under the Arctic ice could take climate change to a whole new level. Antonio Delgado Huertas
The risk with climate change is not with the direct effect of humans on the greenhouse capacity of Earth’s atmosphere. The major risk is that the relatively modest human perturbation will unleash much greater forces. The likelihood of this risk is intimately tied to the developments over the next decade in the Arctic.
Accelerating ice loss and warming of the Arctic is disturbing evidence that dangerous climate change is already with us. As I have argued earlier, now that we have realised this our efforts should be directed at managing the situation in the Arctic and avoiding the spread of dangerous climate change elsewhere.
Whereas the term tipping point was initially introduced to the climate change debate in a metaphoric manner, it has since been formalised and introduced in the context of systems exhibiting rapid, climate-driven change, such as the Arctic. Tipping points have been defined in the context of earth system science as the critical point in forcing at which the future state of the system is qualitatively altered.
Tipping elements are defined, accordingly, as the structural components of the system directly responsible for triggering abrupt changes once a tipping point is passed. This is because they can be switched into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations.
Of the many tipping elements in the Arctic, that with potentially greatest consequences if perturbed is the vast methane deposit. Methane is a greenhouse gas. A molecule of methane has 20 times the greenhouse effect of a CO₂ molecule, and the release of methane has been linked to climatic transitions along the history of planet Earth.
The Arctic contains vast reserves of methane stored as methane hydrate, a gel-like substance formed by methane molecules trapped in frozen water. The methane hydrate deposits are estimated at between 1,000 and 10,000 Gigatons (109 tons) of CO₂-equivalents as methane, much of which is present in the shallow sediments of the extensive Arctic shelves. This amount of greenhouse gas is several times the total CO₂ release since the industrial revolution.
Even moderate (a few degrees C) warming of the overlying waters may change the state of methane from hydrates to methane gas, which would be released to the atmosphere. If this release is gradual, methane will add a greenhouse effect to the atmosphere. This will only be temporary, as it will be oxidised to CO₂, with a decline in the greenhouse effect of 20-fold per unit carbon.
However, if the state shift is abrupt it may lead to a massive release of methane to the atmosphere, which could cause a climatic jump several-fold greater than the accumulated effect of anthropogenic activity.
Data collected on a recent cruise confirm methane is being emitted. Antonio Delgado Huertas
Recent assessments have found bubbling of methane on the Siberian shelf. Models suggest that global warming of 3°C could release between 35 and 94 Gt C of methane, which could add up to an additional 0.5°C of global warming. Moreover, frozen soils and sediments contain large amounts of methane hydrates that can be released to the atmosphere. Indeed, rapid thawing of the Arctic permaforst has been reported to lead to the release of large amounts of methane.
In our most recent cruise this summer (June 2012) along the Fram Strait and Svalbard Islands we found concentrations of methane in the atmosphere of about 1.65 ppm. However our equilibrium experiments (air atmospheric with Arctic surface water) reached values that were generally between 2.5 ppm and 10 ppm, with maximum values up to 35 ppm. These results confirm that this area of the planet is emitting large amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
Understanding and forecasting the response of Arctic methane hydrate deposits to rapid warming and thawing in the Arctic is of the utmost importance.
Provided the magnitude of these risks, and those associated with other tipping elements in the Arctic, our collective response to climate change appears to be a careless walk on the razor edge.
Carlos Duarte receives funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the EU R&D 7th Framework Program to conduct research in the Arctic. He is affiliated, through a joint appointment, with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
Antonio Delgado Huertas receives funding from Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain).
Above chart, based on historic NASA land-surface air temperature anomaly data (see interactive map at the bottom of this page), shows that the average temperature anomaly rise in the Arctic (latitude 64 and higher) looks set to reach 10°C within decades.
These anomalies are based on annual averages that are also averaged over a huge area. The NASA image on the left shows temperature anomalies of over 10°C for the month December 2011.
More detailed analysis shows that, over December 2011, the highest average temperature anomaly (12.8933°C) was recorded in the Kara Sea (latitudes 79 - 81 and longitudes 73 - 89).
NOAA daily data show even more prominent anomalies, especially for the area from the Kara Sea over Franz Josef Land to Svalbard (see Wikipedia image left).
NOAA temperature anomalies for January 31, 2012, seem typical for theover 20°C anomalies that this area has experienced over the period December 7, 2011, to February 11, 2012.
An animated image with the full data over the period December 7, 2011, to February 11, 2012, is displayed in an earlier post at this blog, temperature anomalies over 20 degrees Celsius. (Note: this is a 4.7MB file that may take some time to fully load.)
How is it possible for this specific area to show such huge temperature anomalies?
1. Rivers?
Could it be that warm water from rivers flows into the Kara Sea and is transferred to the atmosphere in this area? This seems unlikely, given that it is winter, while the mainland does not appear to be suffering similar temperature anomalies. The NOAA map below with anomalies for water temperatures (at surface level) also shows no particular anomalies for the Kara Sea.
2. Warm water from the Atlantic Ocean?
Above image shows that the water surface temperature anomalies are most prominent just north of Scandinavia. The reason for this is that thermohaline circulation is pushing warm water from the Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean, as evident when looking at actual water temperatures (image below).
As above image shows, warm water from the Atlantic Ocean hasn't (yet) penetrated the Kara Sea, which makes sense in winter. Therefore, this also seems an unlikely candidate to explain the over 20°C air surface temperature anomalies in the area stretching from the Kara Sea over Franz Josef Land to Svalbard.
3. Methane?
A third possibility is that methane is venting from hydrates in the Arctic and is spread by the wind around the Arctic. This would explain the record methane level of 1870+ reached in the Arctic for January 2012, as shown on the image below.
Particularly worrying is that this methane continues to rise. In the past, methane concentrations have fluctuated up and down in line with the seasons. Over the past seven months, however, methane has shown steady growth in the Arctic. Such a long continuous period of growth is unprecedented, the more so as it takes place in winter, when vegetation growth and algae bloom is minimal. The most obvious explanation for both the temperature anomalies in the Arctic and above image is that the methane is venting from hydrates in the Arctic.
