Ocean Heat Depth

Ocean heat at the equator

On November 24, 2015, equatorial waters at ≈100 m (328 ft) depth at 110-135°W were over 6°C (10.8°F) warmer than average in 1981-2000, as illustrated by above image. The animation below shows equatorial ocean heat over the past few months, illustrating that temperature anomalies greater than 6°C (10.8°F) occurred throughout this period at depths greater than 100 m (328 ft).

The danger of ocean heat destablizing clathrates in the Arctic

The danger is that ever warmer water will reach the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and destabilize methane that is held there in sediments the form of free gas and hydrates.

So, how comparable is the situation at the equator with the situation in the Arctic? How much heating of the Arctic Ocean has taken place over the past few years?

The image on the right, produced with NOAA data, shows mean coastal sea surface temperatures of over 10°C (50°F) in some areas in the Arctic on August 22, 2007.

In shallow waters, heat can more easily reach the bottom of the sea. In 2007, strong polynya activity caused more summertime open water in the Laptev Sea, in turn causing more vertical mixing of the water column during storms in late 2007, according to this study, and bottom water temperatures on the mid-shelf increased by more than 3°C (5.4°F) compared to the long-term mean.

This study finds that drastic sea ice shrinkage causes increase in storm activities and deepening of the wind-wave-mixing layer down to depth ~50 m (164 ft) that enhance methane release from the water column to the atmosphere. Indeed, the danger is that heat will warm up sediments under the sea, containing methane in hydrates and as free gas, causing large amounts of this methane to escape rather abruptly into the atmosphere.

The image below, replotted by Leonid Yurganov from a study by Chepurin et al, shows sea water temperature at different depths in the Barents Sea, as described in an earlier post.

The image below is from a study published in Nature on November 24, 2013, showing water temperatures measurements taken in the Laptev Sea from 1999-2012.

Water temperatures in Laptev Sea. Red triangles: summer. Blue triangles: winter. Green squares: historic data.
From Shakhova et al., (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo2007

Before drawing conclusions, let's examine some peculiarities of the Arctic Ocean more closely, specifically some special conditions in the Arctic that could lead to greater warming than elsewhere and feedbacks that could accelerate warming even more.

Amount of methane ready for release

Sediments underneath the Arctic Ocean hold vast amounts of methane. Just one part of the Arctic Ocean alone, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS, rectangle on map below, from the methane page), holds up to 1700 Gt of methane. A sudden release of just 3% of this amount could add over 50 Gt of methane to the atmosphere, and experts consider such an amount to be ready for release at any time (see above image).



Total methane burden in the atmosphere now is 5 Gt. The 3 Gt that has been added since the 1750s accounts for almost half of the (net) total global warming caused by people. The amount of carbon stored in hydrates globally was in 1992 estimated to be 10,000 Gt (USGS), while a more recent estimate gives a figure of 63,400 Gt (Klauda & Sandler, 2005). The ESAS alone holds up to 1700 Gt of methane in the form of methane hydrates and free gas contained in sediments, of which 50 Gt is ready for abrupt release at any time.



Imagine what kind of devastation an extra 50 Gt of methane could cause. Imagine the warming that will take place if the methane in the atmosphere was suddenly multiplied by 11.

Whiteman et al. recently calculated that such an event would cause $60 trillion in damage. By comparison, the size of the world economy in 2012 was about $70 trillion.

Shallow waters in the Arctic Ocean

Shallow waters and little hydroxyl

The danger is particularly high in the shallow seas that are so prominent in the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the light blue areas on the image on the right, from an earlier post.

Much of the waters in the Arctic Ocean are less than 50 m deep. Being shallow makes waters prone to warm up quickly during summer temperature peaks, allowing heat to penetrate the seabed.

This can destabilize hydrates and methane rising through shallow waters will then also enter the atmosphere more quickly, as it rises abruptly and in plumes.

Elsewhere in the world, releases from hydrates underneath the seafloor will largely be oxidized by methanotroph bacteria in the water and where methane does enter the atmosphere, it will quickly be oxidized by hydroxyl. In shallow waters, however, methane released from the seabed will quickly pass through the water column.

Large abrupt releases will also quickly deplete the oxygen in the water, making it harder for bacteria to break down the methane.

Very little hydroxyl is present in the atmosphere over the poles, as illustrated by the image on the right, showing global hydroxyl levels, from an earlier post.

In case of a large abrupt methane release from the Arctic Ocean, the little hydroxyl that is present in the atmosphere over the Arctic will therefore be quickly depleted, and the methane will hang around for much longer locally than elsewhere on Earth.

Shallow waters make the Arctic Ocean more prone to methane releases, while low hydroxyl levels make that methane that enters the atmosphere in the Arctic will contribute significantly to local warming and threaten to trigger further methane releases.

High levels of insolation in summer in the Arctic

Furthermore, the amount of solar radiation received by the Arctic at the June Solstice is higher than anywhere else on Earth, as illustrated by the image below, showing insolation on the Northern Hemisphere by month and latitude, in Watt per square meter, from an earlier post.

Warm water enters Arctic Ocean from Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

What further makes the situation in the Arctic particularly dangerous is that waters are not merely warmed up from the top down by sunlight that is especially strong over the Arctic Ocean in summer on the Northern Hemisphere, but also by warm water that flows into the Arctic Ocean from rivers and by warm water that enters the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait and through the North Atlantic Ocean. The latter danger is illustrated by the image below, from an earlier post.

Feedbacks

Furthermore, there are feedbacks that can rapidly accelerate warming in the Arctic, such as albedo losses due to loss of sea ice and snow cover on land, and changes to the jet stream resulting in more extreme weather. These feedbacks, described in more details at this page, are depicted in the image below.

Methane

Above image shows that methane levels on December 3, 2015, were as high as 2445 parts per billion (ppb) at 469 millibars, which corresponds to an altitude of 19,810 feet or 6,041 m.

The solid magenta-colored areas (levels over 1950 ppb) that show up over a large part of the Arctic Ocean indicate very strong methane releases.

Note there are many grey areas on above image. These are areas where no measurements could be taken, which is likely due to the strength of winds, rain, clouds and the jet stream, as also illustrated by the more recent (December 5, 2015) images on the right.

The polar jet stream on the Northern Hemisphere shows great strength, with speeds as high as 243 mph or 391 km/h (over a location over japan marked by green circle) on December 5, 2015.

So, high methane levels may well have been present in these grey areas, but didn't show up due to the weather conditions of the moment.

Furthermore, the white geometric areas are due the way the satellite takes measurements, resulting in areas that are not covered.

Finally, it should be noted that much of the methane will have been broken down in the water, before entering the atmosphere, so what shows up in the atmosphere over the Arctic is only part of the total amount of methane that is released from the seafloor.

In conclusion, the high methane levels showing up over the Arctic indicate strong methane releases from the seafloor due to warm waters destabilizing sediments that contain huge amounts of methane in the form of free gas and hydrates.

Climate Plan

As global warming continues, the risk increases that greater ocean heat will reach the Arctic Ocean and will cause methane to be released in large quantities from the Arctic Ocean seafloor. The 2015 El Niño has shown that a huge amounts of ocean heat can accumulate at a depth greater than 100 m (328 ft). Conditions in the Arctic and feedbacks make that methane threatens to be released there abruptly and in large quantities as warming continues.

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

On November 24, 2015, equatorial waters at ≈100 m (328 ft) depth at 110-135°W were over 6°C (10.8°F) warmer than average...
Posted by Sam Carana on Friday, December 4, 2015

High Methane Readings continue over Depth of Arctic Ocean

The image below contains 12 frames, with methane readings recorded over 12 days in the first half of October 2013.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

As discussed in earlier posts at this blog, high methane readings have been recorded recently over the depth of Arctic Ocean. Above image shows that these high readings are continuing. The image below shows that at 469 mb, the altitude at which the highest reading was recorded on the afternoon of October 13, methane shows up very prominently over the Arctic Ocean.

The fact that little methane shows up elsewhere indicates that methane is present at high levels, at times over 2200 ppb, over the depth of the Arctic Ocean, and that these high levels result from methane that originates from hydrates under the seabed.

The image below, with methane readings over the past few days (from October 12 10:00 pm to October 14 11:23 pm), shows high levels of methane over the depth of the Arctic Ocean.

The image below shows methane readings at 586 mb, the altitude at which the highest methane reading was recorded on the afternoon of October 14 (a reading of 2248 ppb). Again, methane is present very prominently over the depth of the Arctic Ocean.

Post by Sam Carana.

 

Methane over deep waters of Arctic Ocean

The image below shows a lot of methane over deeper parts of oceans, in particular the Arctic Ocean.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Let's zoom in and take a closer look at what's happening.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

As earlier discussed in the post Methane release caused by earthquakes, there has been a lot of seismic activity in the Aleutian Islands region all the way up into Alaska, including an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale on August 30, 2013, and several more recent earthquakes with a higher magnitude than 6 on the Richter scale.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.6 on the Richter scale hit the Laptev Sea on September 28, 2013. Furthermore, there have been several earthquakes in Siberia, while an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale recently hit the Sea of Okhotsk, which occurred at a depth of 359.3 miles (578.24 km). Earthquakes at such a depth can be felt at great distances from the epicenter and can destabilize methane hydrates.

The presence of methane over the deeper parts of the Arctic Ocean has been discussed in a number of post at this blog recently (see under related, below). It should serve as a warning to those who believed that all methane escaping from deep-sea hydrates would be oxidized in the water by microbes before entering the atmosphere.

The IPCC appears to still close its eyes for such scenarios. Look at this screenshot from IPCC AR5 WGI TS.3.7:

Low release this century? Well, the danger may seem low now in many places, but the situation is already very dangerous in the Arctic, where hydroxyl levels in the atmosphere are very low, where water temperatures can show huge anomalies and where seas can be very shallow and at times become super-saturated with methane, to the extent that oxygen depletion in the water prevents methane oxidation. In the case of large abrupt release, waters will soon become super-saturated with methane locally, especially in the shallow parts of the Arctic Ocean. Furthermore, low sea temperatures and the peculiarities of currents create conditions in the Arctic Ocean that are not beneficial to the kind of growth of microbes that would decompose methane in oceans elsewhere.

How much methane are we talking about? One look at the top image shows that there's a huge amount of methane over the Arctic Ocean. On October 3, 2013, a peak reading was recorded of 2283 ppb and that wasn't even the highest recent reading, as illustrated by the graph below.

Where were these large amounts of methane released? The animation below shows methane methane readings of over 1950 ppb on October 3, 2013, on the afternoon only and with readings at only four relatively low altitudes, with methane over the Arctic Ocean dominating the picture.

Open Water In Areas Around North Pole

In some areas around the North Pole, thickness of the sea ice has declined to virtually zero, i.e. open water.

What could have caused this open water? Let's go through some of the background.

North Hemisphere snow cover has been low for some time. Snow cover in May 2013 was the lowest on record for Eurasia. There now is very little snow left, as shown on the image right, adapted from the National Ice Center.

Low snow cover is causing more sunlight to be absorbed, rather than reflected back into space. As can be expected, there now are high surface temperatures in many areas, as illustrated by the NOAA image below. Anomalies can be very high in specific cases. Zyryanka, Siberia, recently recorded a high of 37.4 C, against normal high temperatures of 20 C to 21 C for this time of year. Heat wave conditions were also recorded in Alaska recently (satellite image of Alaska below).

NASA image June 17, 2013, credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC - from caption by Adam Voiland: "Talkeetna, a town about 100 miles north of Anchorage, saw temperatures reach 96°F (36°C) on June 17. Other towns in southern Alaska set all-time record highs, including Cordova, Valez, and Seward. The high temperatures also helped fuel wildfires and hastened the breakup of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea."

Accordingly, a large amount of relatively warm water from rivers has flowed into the Arctic Ocean, in addition to warm water from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Sea surface temperatures have been anomalously high in many places around the edges of the sea ice, as also shown on the NOAA image below.

Nonetheless, as the above images also make clear, sea surface temperatures closer to the North Pole have until now remained at or below zero degrees Celsius, with sea ice cover appearing to remain in place. The webcam below from the North Pole Environmental Observatory shows that there still is a lot of ice, at least in some parts around the North Pole.

Webcam #2 of the North Pole Environmental Observatory monitoring UPMC's Atmospheric Buoy, June 21, 2013

So, what could have caused the sea ice to experience such a dramatic thickness decline in some areas close to the North Pole?

Firstly, as discussed in earlier posts, there has been strong cyclonic activity over the Arctic Ocean (see also Arctic Sea Ice blog post). This has made the sea ice more prone and vulnerable to the rapid decline that is now taking place in many areas.

Furthermore, Arctic sea ice thickness is very low, as illustrated by the image below.

Arctic sea ice volume/extent ratio, adapted by Sam Carana from an image by Neven (click to enlarge)

Finally, there has been a lot of sunshine at the North Pole. At this time of year, insolation in the Arctic is at its highest. Solstice (June 20 or June 21, 2013, depending on time zone) is the day when the Arctic receives the most hours of sunlight, as Earth reaches its maximum axial tilt toward the sun of 23° 26'. In fact, insolation during the months June and July is higher in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth, as shown on the image below.

Monthly insolation for selected latitudes -  adapted from Pidwirny, M. (2006), in "Earth-Sun Relationships and Insolation",  Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd Edition. 

In conclusion, the current rapid sea ice thickness decline close to the North Pole is mostly due to a combination of earlier cyclonic activity and lots of sunlight, while the sea ice was already very thin to start with. The cyclone broke up the sea ice at the center of the Arctic Ocean, which is turn made it more prone to melting rapidly. The cyclone did more, though, as contributor to the Arctic-news blog Veli Albert Kallio explains:

"The ocean surface freezes if the temperature falls below -2.5C. The reason for the negative melting point is the presence of 4-5% of sea salt. Only in the polar regions does the sea surface cool sufficiently for sea ice to form during winters.

The sea ice cover is currently thinning near the North Pole between 80-90 degrees north. This part of the ocean is very deep. It receives heat of the Gulf Stream from the south: as the warm water vapourises, its salt content to water increases. This densifies the Gulf Stream which then falls onto the sea floor where it dissipates its heat to the overlying water column. The deep basin of the Arctic Ocean is now getting sufficiently warmed for the thin sea ice cover to thin on top of it. The transportation of heat to the icy surface is combined with the winds that push cold surface water down while rising heat to surface."

Indeed, vertical mixing of the water column was enhanced due to cyclonic activity, and this occurred especially in the parts of the Arctic Ocean that also are the deepest, as illustrated by the animation below.

Legend right: Ice thickness in m from Naval Research Laboratory
Legend bottom: Sea depth (blue) and land height (brown/green)
in m from NIBCAO Arctic map at NOAA

The compilation of images below shows how the decline of sea ice has taken place in a matter of weeks.

[ click to enlarge ]

This spells bad news for the future. It confirms earlier analyses (see links below) that the sea ice will disappear altogether within years. It shows that the sea ice is capable of breaking up abruptly, not only at the outer edges, but also at the center of the Arctic Ocean. As the Arctic sea ice keeps declining in thickness, it does indeed look set to break up and disappear abruptly across most of the Arctic Ocean within a few years. Models that are based on sea ice merely shrinking slowly from the outer edges inward should reconsider their projections accordingly.

Related

- Getting the Picture
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/getting-the-picture.html

- Supplementary evidence by Prof. Peter Wadhams
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/04/supplementary-evidence-by-prof-peter.html