Arctic News: methane hydrates

Showing posts with label methane hydrates. Show all posts

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Sea surface temperature at record high

As the above image shows, the daily sea surface temperature between 60°South and 60°North reached a record high level on March 31, 2023, i.e. the highest temperature in the NOAA record that started in 1981.

This record high sea surface temperature comes as we're moving into an El Niño, as illustrated by the image on the right, adapted from NOAA.

Moving from the bottom of a La Niña to the peak of a strong El Niño could make a difference of more than half a degree Celsius, as illustrated by the image below, adapted from NOAA.

Furthermore, sunspots look set to reach a high maximum within years, and the 2022 Tonga submarine volcano eruption did add a huge amount of water vapor to the atmosphere, as discussed in an earlier post.

Even more dangerous than high global sea surface temperatures are sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic, which have been at a record high for the time of year for some time, climbing to well above 20°C on March 29, 2023, as illustrated by the image below.

Vast amounts of heat moves from the North Atlantic into the Arctic. Around this time of year, North Atlantic sea surface temperatures are at their annual low, in line with changes in the seasons. Last year, North Atlantic sea surface temperatures reached a record high of 24.9°C in early September.

On March 15, 2023, sea surface temperatures off the east coast of North America were as much as 13.8°C or 24.8°F higher than 1981-2011, as illustrated by the above image. Sea surface temperature anomalies are also high in the Pacific, reflecting an upcoming El Niño. All this spells bad news for Arctic sea ice, which typically reaches its lowest extent in September.

The above Argo float compilation image illustrates the danger that a cold freshwater lid is forming on top of the North Atlantic.

[ Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic (2020) ]

Stronger winds along the path of the Gulf Stream can at times speed up sea currents that travel underneath this cold freshwater lid over the North Atlantic. As a result, huge amounts of warm, salty water can travel from the Atlantic Ocean toward the Arctic Ocean, abruptly pushing up temperatures and salinity levels at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

The above Argo float image illustrates the danger that heat can reach the seafloor. North of Norway, where the water is less than 400 m deep, temperatures higher than 5°C show up throughout the vertical water column, over a period from May 31, 2022, to March 16, 2023.

The panel on the left of the above image, from an earlier post, shows sea surface temperatures on June 20, 2020, while the panel on the right shows a bathymetry map indicating that the sea in a large part of the Arctic Ocean is very shallow.

The above map shows the thickness of Northern Hemisphere permafrost on land and below the seabed.

The above image describes how methane can escape from the permafrost and the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

The danger of destabilization of methane hydrates is especially large where methane is present in submarine permafrost and seas are shallow, such as the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS, see image below).

The above image was created with content from a paper by Natalia Shakhova et al., from an earlier post.

[ click on images to enlarge ]

As illustrated by above compilation image, both the volume and extent of Arctic sea ice are low for the time of year.

With further melting of sea ice and thawing of permafrost, the Arctic Ocean can be expected to receive more heat over the next few years, more heat from direct sunlight, more heat from rivers, more heat from heatwaves and more ocean heat from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

The above image illustrates the danger of two tipping points getting crossed, i.e. the Latent Heat Tipping Point and the Seafloor Methane Tipping Point, resulting in rapid destabilization of methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean leading to explosive eruptions of methane, as its volume increases 160 to 180-fold when leaving the hydrates.

Latent heat loss, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page

Climate Emergency Declaration

A catastrophe of unimaginable proportions is unfolding. Life is disappearing from Earth and runaway heating could destroy all life. At 5°C heating, most life on Earth will have disappeared. When looking only at near-term human extinction, 3°C will likely suffice.

Meanwhile, current laws punish people for the most trivial things, while leaving the largest crime one can imagine unpunished: planetary omnicide!

Considering this, a Climate Emergency should be declared, supporting action including:

Institutionalization of climate deniers until rehabilitated, under national acts such as the U.S. RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act and Sherman Antitrust Act.
Holding politicians accountable for omnicide (crimes against humanity and ecocide) and bringing them before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, if they seek to indemnify themselves for their inadequate action on the unfolding climate catastrophe.
Local implementation of action on climate change, with Local People's Courts ensuring that implementation is based on the best-available scientific analysis, to avoid control by politicians who get bought by looters and polluters.

Links

• Climate Reanalyzer - Daily sea surface temperatures
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily

• NOAA - Climate Prediction Center - ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

• Nullschool
https://earth.nullschool.net

• NOAA - Monthly Temperature Anomalies Versus El Niño
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202302/supplemental/page-4

• NSIDC - Chartic interactive sea ice graph
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph

• Polar Portal

http://polarportal.dk

• Argo Float 4903641

https://fleetmonitoring.euro-argo.eu/float/4903641

• Argo Float 7901007

https://fleetmonitoring.euro-argo.eu/float/7901007

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/cold-freshwater-lid-on-north-atlantic.html

• Albedo, latent heat, insolation and more
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/albedo.html

• Latent Heat
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/latent-heat.html

• The Threat of Global Warming causing Near-Term Human Extinction

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/threat.html

• Feedbacks

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Fast Path to Extinction

[ click on images enlarge ]

May 2020 was the hottest May on record, the third monthly record in the year to date, even though there was no El Niño in 2020 (yet). An El Niño event later in 2020, combined with further warming elements, such as loss of the aerosol masking effect due to COVID-19 lockdowns, could trigger a huge temperature rise, as the red trend illustrates. The year 2020 looks set or close to become the hottest on record, as illustrated by the blue trend that points at a continuing rise reaching 3°C by 2026, i.e. likely driving humans into extinction.

The May 2020 ocean temperature anomaly on the Northern Hemisphere was 0.94°C or 1.67°F higher than the 20th century average, the highest May anomaly on record.

The latent heat tipping point threatens to be crossed as ocean temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere reach 1°C above the 20th century average, in turn threatening the methane hydrates tipping point to get crossed, i.e. as ocean temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere become higher than 1.35°C above the 20th century average.

Arctic sea ice is getting very thin and, at this time of year, it is melting rapidly from below, due to the rising temperature of the Arctic Ocean. The sea ice underneath the surface of the Arctic Ocean is disappearing rapidly, due to the influx of warm and salty water from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Sea surface temperature anomalies from the 20th century on the Northern Hemisphere in °C.
Yellow circles are anomalies for the month May, red circles are anomalies for other months.

An earlier analysis indicates that the latent heat tipping point threatens to get crossed as ocean temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere reach 1°C above the 20th century average. As above image indicates, the tipping point was briefly crossed before, but this year it looks set to get crossed irreversibly.

At that point, there will be little or no Arctic sea ice left underneath the sea surface all year long, so the sea ice has lost most of its capacity to act as a buffer to consume further heat arriving from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Arctic sea ice volume has been at record low for almost all of 2020 to date, while 2019 volume was at a record low from October, making that volume has been at record low for almost 8 months straight.

Crossing the latent heat tipping point means that huge amounts of incoming heat will get absorbed by the Arctic Ocean, instead of getting consumed by the melting of sea ice, as was previously the case.

As long as there is sea ice in the water, this sea ice will keep absorbing heat as it melts, so the temperature will not rise at the sea surface.

There is ever less sea ice left underneath the surface to absorb ocean heat, and the amount of energy that used to be absorbed by melting ice is as much as it takes to heat an equivalent mass of water from zero to 80°C.

Meanwhile, global heating continues and more than 90% of global heating is going into oceans.

As discussed in an earlier post, the loss of subsurface sea ice is only one of ten tipping points hitting the Arctic. As the temperature of the oceans keeps rising, more heat will reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain vast amounts of methane, as discussed in this page and this post. The danger is that this heat will destabilize the ice and the hydrates, resulting in huge releases of methane. The methane hydrates tipping point threatens to get crossed as ocean temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere become higher than 1.35°C above the 20th century average, which threatens to occur early next year.

The danger is illustrated by the image below, posted in February 2019 and showing a potential rise of 18°C or 32.4°F from 1750 by the year 2026.