The worst-case and - unfortunately - looking almost certain to happen scenario

Aaron Franklin

By Aaron Franklin

I have asked for the world leading climate and arctic scientists I have been working with at AMEG, and Arctic-News to review this, and if they don't agree with any part or the end conclusion to please inform me immediately.

As yet no-one has come forward, with any criticisms whatsoever, only agreement that this is what we are very likely facing.

If we don't act very fast and the Arctic sea ice goes...

Up till now the sea ice, and the pool of low salinity meltwater left on the surface of the arctic ocean from it melting has blocked the warm Gulf stream from getting any further than the strip of coast with a shallow continental shelf seabed, around the north of Europe and western Russia as far as the islands and peninsulars that jut north from the west Siberian coast.

High salinity, warm gulfstream water of tropical origin does not mix freely with cold low density low salinity meltwater. It mixes and sinks in a sheet current at the boundary between these two bodies of water.

This has not caused any big problems so far as it has been happening along a fairly short boundary above shallow continental shelf and the downwards mixed flow is slowed by flowing over the the shelf before it sinks into the deep polar basin.

However... the meltpool on top of the Arctic ocean has been getting smaller every year and if we let the gulf stream get any further than it has to date then it will most likely continue all the way along the east Siberian coast, combine with the warm bering strait inflow, encircle the whole polar basin. Or at least most of it, if there is still enough multi-year sea-ice damming up against the west coast of the north Canadian archipelago to stop it getting to the extreme Canadian side of the arctic ocean.

There probably isn't enough multiyear seaice left to do this anyway and it won't make any differency to the overall outcome anyway, which is....

Encouraged by the anti-clockwise, low level Arctic atmospheric wind vortex (the low pressure system that is usually in place over the nth pole) the gulf-stream loop will accelerate, forming a mixing vortex (whirlpool), first sucking down any remaining surface meltwater pool to deep polar ocean, along a long circular front above the deep polar basin.

As this is happening the Gulf stream and Bering strait warm water inputs will accelerate dragging ever warmer water in, and the entire Arctic ocean near surface region will flood with warm high salinity water at up to 12C or even higher.

This will eliminate any chance of the arctic ocean refreezing in winter. And:

The average 12C temperatures of the upper layer of the polar ocean will be sending a big thermal pulse down through the East Siberian Arctic Shelf and other shallow submarine permafrosts in the arctic. This pulse propagating fast through liquid water in cracks and methane eruption vents. The hydrate layers containing over 1000 billion tons C of methane at the bottoms of these permafrosts will be destabilising, bottom up, when that thermal pulse pins them between itself and rising geothermal heat.

The ESAS and other Arctic shelf Methane Hydrate reefs will be fizzing like an alka-seltzer in a glass of warm water, and the wind-turbulated open water will mean lots of that methane getting into the atmosphere and spiking global warming.

As the sun has set for the north polar winter at this point, the northern Alaskan, Siberian, and Canadian tundras will cool rapidly as usual. But this time the warm surface of the polar ocean will be releasing water vapour and this warm low density air/water vapour mixture will rise, accelerating the polar low into a very deep arctic storm system, very likely far stronger than any we've ever seen.

This will erupt warm water vapour bearing air high into the troposphere, and stratosphere above the pole and this will suck in the cold air from over Alaskan, Siberian, and Canadian tundras, drawing in air from further south and causing heavy winter rainfall rather than light snowfall. (usually in winter polar highs are dominant and descending cold dry air from these flows out over the Alaskan, Siberian, and Canadian tundras).

The tundra permafrosts will now be drenched in large volume rainfalls. The warm lakes and bogs all over them will be drilling through the permafrost, and lots of the around 1700 billion tons C of organic carbon locked up in the land permafrost will be flooding into the Arctic Ocean from Siberia, Alaska and North Canada. And getting sucked down the polar plughole. Lots will be getting released into the air as methane and carbon dioxide, and spiking global warming.

The donut-shaped circulation pattern sitting like a crown over the Arctic circle will start drawing down stratospheric air from further south.

Sometime soon, very probably in the nest northern summer monsoon season...

-At this point the extra methane, ozone, water vapour, and the loss of sea ice reflecting sunlight back into space will together be producing about 3x present day global warming effect.

and...

The jetstreams that are formed by warm moist air rising from the equator, dumping that moisture as heavy tropical rain in the tropics usually descend in the subtropical desert belts that circle the globe. They like cogs intermeshing will connect with the polar donut, drawing the summer monsoon north over the subtropical desert belts and building rapidly to tropical rainfall levels over the worlds deserts.

The dry descending air from the equatorial and north polar origin tropospheric flows and jetstreams will turn the temporate zones of the northern hemisphere into deserts in one year.

The ex tundra boglands will start to dry out. Its been learnt that when you thaw and soak permafrost peats, waking up the frozen bacteria. Then drain them....

-Significant quantities of Nitrous Oxide (N2O) start being emitted. Another "super-greenhouse" gas, with its own special radiative absorption band.

-With even more water vapour, more methane, more N2O, more ozone being produced by the methane, less SO2 forming clouds because methane destroys it....

Global warming will start to spike very high.

What happens maybe very quickly now is that an equatorial origin jetstream will either detach from its mode of descending at the new temporate zone deserts and form a new anticyclone most probably over greenland, or the anticyclone from that jetstream will migrate north from the subpolar tundras over North Canada.

Either way this special anticyclone with a very big future, will winch its way around the polar low in the new easterly "tradewinds belt" where the tundras and boreal forests are now. It will probably end up over the Beaufort sea, north of Alaska and recruiting more stratospheric jetstreams of Equatorial origin, quickly grow in strength. It will start a new clockwise ocean surface vortex in the Beaufort sea region, and if any iceflows and cold meltwater are still trapped against the west coast of the Canadian Archipelago.....

They will get sucked into this new clockwise vortex and it will love feeding on them and growing just like in the first anticlockwise vortex described above.

The new polar super anticyclone will out compete the previous polar super cyclone by one by one recruiting all the equatorial and tropical origin jetstreams, and become a, for any relevance to us, permanent, extremely powerful anticyclone over the whole polar ocean.

The new clockwise polar ocean vortex will be accelerated by the clockwise anticyclonic low atmospheric vortex. There will likely be lots of Glacier calved icebergs from Greenland, stuck against the west coast of the Canadian Archipelago. It will love gobbling, melting, and feeding on those.

It will steal the deep subduction from, and outcompete and swallow the previous anticlockwise polar ocean vortex.

Powering up this vast whirlpool, will suck in ever increasing flows of Atlantic and Pacific water, flooding the Arctic ocean with more and more tropical water. It will shovel more and more warm surface water like a wedge into a new intermediate temperature, high salinity layer, building between the tidal mixed zone and the surface mixed layer .

This intermediate layer is said to be the mechanism that produces anoxic oceans in past super-greenhouse/ anoxic ocean events. And this will happen fast because....

The tundra permafrosts will be seasonal deserts, but much warmer now. In summer they will be drenched by tropical temperature and volume rainfalls, hammered by cold fronts, supercell storms and tornados spitting off the high lattitude Megacyclones. The warm lakes and bogs all over them will be drilling through the permafrost, and more of the around 1700 billion tons C of organic carbon currently locked up in the land permafrost will be flooding into the arctic ocean from Siberia, Alaska and Nth Canada. And getting sucked down the polar plughole. More methane and CO2 will be making it into the atmosphere

In winter the ex tundras will dry out. Releasing yet more N2O and CO2.

Global Warming will spike through the roof.

And...

The by now over 20 degrees Celsius temperatures of the upper layer of the polar ocean will be sending a massive thermal pulse down through the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) and other shallow submarine permafrosts in the arctic. This pulse propagating fast through liquid water in cracks and methane eruption vents. The hydrate layers containing over 1000 billion tons C of methane at the bottoms of these permafrosts will destabilise fast, bottom up, when that thermal pulse hits them. Quite possible the pressure building up under these shelves, most particularly the ESAS will shatter them and release most of the hydrate methane, free methane, and undecomposed organic carbon, they are holding very fast indeed. Best estimate around 2750 billion tons C total in shallow submarine arctic permafrosts.

Kinda like a warm well shook champagne bottle when you pop the cork.

Lots of this methane will hit the atmosphere.

With even more water vapour, more methane, more N2O, more ozone being produced by the methane, less SO2 forming clouds because methane destroys it....

Ballpark Chart for near filling of all relevant Radiative Absorption bands

We'll have a greenhouse effect like the earth has not seen before in its 4.5 billion years of existence.

What REALLY concerns me looking at this chart is how much it would take going from this point to the Tipping Point for the Venus syndrome.

The situation in this chart would lead to a lot more stratospheric water vapour feedback. That could start to run away until the equatorial oceans boil, and there's no stopping things from there.

Lots of methane will get sucked down the Arctic plughole into the new anoxic intermediate ocean layer.

Archer 2007 states that 1000 billion tons C of methane (and/or other dissolved organic carbon) is sufficient to remove all oxygen from the worlds oceans. That won't take long.

• The polar ocean vortex might eventually stop. The momentum in ocean circulation, both deep and in surface gyres, combined with wind driven surface currents won't let this happen fast.
•  In maybe 300-1000yrs a second even larger methane release will occur, as the heat from the surface reaches the deep sea bed. The deep sea Methane hydrates are estimated as between 5000 and 78 000 billion tons C of methane. That will not be nice at all, but there may be nothing left but bacteria well before then anyhow.
•  The tropical/subtropical origin MegaCyclones to polar Mega AntiCyclone jetstreams with low atmosphere return system will most probably stick around for at least 100 000 years. 
• The previous anoxic supergreenhouse/anoxic ocean events did have stalled ocean circulation, and the only way that they could have had 27C polar ocean temps like they did is by the Equatorial-Polar jetstream circulation mode described above. 
• The most serious previously, the end-permian had no polar basin, oceanic/ atmosphere circulation, turbine pump "beartrap" for the planetary eco-geosphere to put its foot in. Neither did the PETM and Elmo supergreenhouse/anoxic ocean events, the most serious of the last 100+ million years, the polar basin was landlocked for those. 
• Never before could the earth have had as much polar permafrost methane and carbon as it does now. 

I hope this explains to everyone the urgency and seriousness of the current situation, and why we need to act with overwhelming force to stop the arctic sea-ice going this year.

If we don't act fast now all this could very well unfold unstoppably in the next year or two. Can't see it taking much longer than 10 or 20 at the most.

Call for High-Level Risk Assessment

There is a rapid and accelerating decline of Arctic and Far North snow and summer albedo cooling, with the Arctic summer sea ice past tipping point. Several potentially catastrophic (to huge human populations and all future generations) Arctic changes are happening decades ahead of model projections. This is potentially a United States and world food security emergency, and an Arctic methane feedback planetary emergency. The pace is outstripping the capacity of the international published climate modeling science to assess the risks. The climate science assessment process is unable to rapidly assess all the risks and the combined risk of all risk factors.

In 2008 and again in 2012, after the large drops in summer sea ice extent, James Hansen made a public statement that the world is a state of planetary emergency. Starting in 2006 John Holdren presented the scientific evidence that we are beyond dangerous interference with the climate system and challenged to prevent catastrophic interference.

The problem is that the summer sea ice cover, Arctic frozen methane and world food security are not projected by the assessments to be a serious problem for many decades. This despite the fact that for many years scientists have warned that the loss of the Arctic summer sea ice cover would result in a large boost in warming, and that this would cause the release of the vast Arctic stores methane to start. Scientists call the Arctic summer sea ice cover the air conditioner of the entire Northern hemisphere.

We are seeing a multi-year heat and drought situation affecting the world’s top Northern hemisphere food producing regions of the U.S., Russia and China. Increasing drought affecting these regions is projected, but the situation developing right now may be due to the loss of Arctic albedo affecting the weather of the normally temperate climate zone of the Northern hemisphere, on top of sustained direct greenhouse gas warming.

All Arctic sources of global warming vulnerable methane are emitting more methane with the amplified increasing Arctic warming. This includes the destabilization of the methane that is contained in the form of hydrates and free gas in the Arctic seabed. Atmospheric methane is now on a renewed sustained increase - this time due to planetary methane emissions.

Without getting a rapid risk assessment of this situation there seems no hope of any measures to address it. The UN climate negotiations for world emissions reductions are on hold till 2020. Emissions have never been higher and are increasing and the only plan is to burn more fossil fuels and of the worst kind.

Leading climate experts say we are now committed to a warming over 2C, probably to 3C and possibly 4C. We are on track for 6C by 2100. Even an all out emergency scale response would not see any reduction of atmospheric GHGs for many decades.

We call for an urgent high-level risk assessment to capture all these adverse trends and situations. An Arctic climate risk assessment is needed to address the unprecedented risks that are threatening the security of the U.S., the Northern hemisphere and the world at large, and the well-being of both current and future generations.

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Above call for a high-level risk assessment was initiated by Dr. Peter Carter of the Climate Emergency Institute. Please try and improve this message and see that it finds its way to the people who need to see this and take action, including leading climate scientists, doctors, politicians and those holding public office positions with a duty of care.

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Expedition to study methane gas bubbling out of the Arctic seafloor

The black rectangle on this map shows the general region
where Paull and his collaborators have been studying
methane releases in the Beaufort Sea. The smaller red
rectangle indicates the edge of the continental shelf and
continental slope where they will conduct research during t
heir current expedition. These areas are shown in greater
detail in the maps below. Base image: Google Maps

Chasing gas bubbles in the Beaufort Sea

In the remote, ice-shrouded Beaufort Sea, methane (the main component of natural gas) has been bubbling out of the seafloor for thousands of years. MBARI geologist Charlie Paull and his colleagues at the Geological Survey of Canada are trying to figure out where this gas is coming from, how fast it is bubbling out of the sediments, and how it affects the shape and stability of the seafloor. Although Paull has been studying this phenomenon for a decade, his research has taken on new urgency in recent years, as the area is being eyed for oil and gas exploration.

In late September 2012, Paull and his fellow researchers will spend two weeks in the Beaufort Sea on board the Canadian Coast Guard ship Sir Wilfred Laurier, collecting seafloor sediment, mapping the seafloor using sonar, installing an instrument that will "listen" for undersea gas releases, and using a brand new undersea robot to observe seafloor features and collect gas samples.

This will be Paull's third Beaufort Sea expedition. As in previous expeditions, he will be working closely with Scott Dallimore of Natural Resources Canada's Geological Survey of Canada and Humfrey Melling of Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Paull's work in the Arctic started in 2003, with an investigation into the enigmatic underwater hills called "pingo-like features" (PLFs) that rise out of the continental shelf of the Beaufort Sea. (Pingos are isolated conical hills found on land in some parts of the Arctic and subarctic.)

Over time, the focus of the team's research has moved farther offshore, into deeper water. Their second expedition in 2010 looked at diffuse gas venting along the seaward edge of the continental shelf. The 2012 expedition will focus on three large gas-venting structures on the continental slope, at depths of 290 to 790 meters (950 to 2,600 feet).

This idealized cross section of the continental shelf and
continental slope in the Beaufort Sea shows zones in the
seafloor where permafrost and methane hydrate are
likely to exist, as well as hypothetical locations of methane
seeps on the seafloor. Ocean depths not shown to scale.
Image: © 2012 MBARI

Frozen gas—a relict of previous ice ages

The Beaufort Sea, north of Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories, is a hostile environment by any definition of the term. It is covered with ice for much of the year. Historically, only from mid-July to October has a narrow strip of open water appeared within about 50 to 100 kilometers (30 to 60 miles) of the coast. Even at this time of year, winds often howl at 40 knots and temperatures can drop well below freezing at night. Researchers must allow extra time for contingencies such dodging pack ice and having to shovel snow off the deck of the research vessel.

Average annual air temperatures along the coast of the Beaufort Sea are well below freezing. Thus deeper soils remain permanently frozen throughout the year, forming what is called permafrost. Around the Beaufort Sea, permafrost extends more than 600 meters (about 2,000 feet) below the ground.

Permafrost also exists in the sediments underlying the continental shelf of Beaufort Sea. This permafrost is a relict of the last ice age, when sea level was as much as 120 meters lower than today. At that time, areas that are now covered with seawater were exposed to the frigid Arctic air.

As sea-level rose over the last 10,000 years, it flooded the continental shelf with seawater. Although the water in the Beaufort Sea is cold—about minus 1.5 degrees Centigrade—it is still much warmer than the air, which averages minus 15 degrees C. Thus, as the ocean rose, it is gradually warmed up the permafrost beneath the continental shelf, causing it to melt.

Quite a bit of methane, the main component of "natural gas," is trapped within the permafrost. As the permafrost melts, it releases this methane, which may seep up through the sediments and into the overlying ocean water.

The deeper sediments of the Beaufort Sea also contain abundant layers of methane hydrate—an ice-like mixture of water and natural gas. As the seafloor has warmed, these hydrates have also begun to decompose, releasing additional methane gas into the surrounding sediment.

These maps show the area to be studied during the
current expedition. The lower map shows the continental
shelf and continental slope of the Beaufort Sea. The
upper image shows detailed seafloor bathymetry of a
portion of the continental slope that will be studied
during the current cruise, as well as the three seafloor
mounds that the researchers will explore using their
new ROV. Lower image modified from Google Maps.
Upper image: Natural Resources Canada.

A tantalizing glimpse

A 2010 expedition by Paull and his colleagues provided a tantalizing glimpse of how much methane is present on the continental shelf of the Beaufort Sea. Using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with video camera to explore the shelf edge, they found white mats of methane-loving bacteria almost everywhere. They also videotaped what turned out to be methane bubbles emerging from many of these mats. Based on these observations, as well as the contents of sediment cores collected by the Geological Survey of Canada, the researchers concluded that the shelf edge is an area of "widespread diffuse venting" and that "methane permeates the shelf edge sediments in this region."

During 2010, the research team also conducted ROV dives on a shallow underwater mound called Kopanoar PLF. At the top of this mound they discovered "vigorous and continuous gas venting" that released clouds of bubbles and sediment into the water. In one ROV dive, the researchers saw something no one had ever seen before—a plume of gas bubbles that moved rapidly along the sea floor, apparently following a crack in the sediment that was in the process of being forced open by the pressure of the gas coming up from below.

The researchers also studied several deeper PLFs during the 2010 expedition. They dropped core tubes into the tops of these mounds. When the cores were lifted back onto the ship, the sediments inside fizzed and bubbled for up to an hour. The sediment was chock full of methane hydrates. Paull said, "We knew that there was a lot of gas venting going on down there, and now we have good reasons to believe that methane hydrates are present within the surface sediments. But our ROV couldn't dive deep enough, so we weren't able to go down and see what these areas actually looked like." That's one reason the team is heading back to the Arctic in 2012.

MBARI researchers tested this new mini-ROV
in the institute's test tank before sending it out
to face the challenges of the Arctic Ocean.
Image: Todd Walsh © 2012 MBARI

Heading back for more

For the 2012 expedition, the team will continue its strategy of following the topography to study areas of gas venting in the Beaufort Sea. They plan to focus on three circular, flat-topped mounds on the continental slope. The researchers believe that these pingo-like features form at the tops of "chimneys" or conduits where methane is seeping up from sediments hundreds of meters below the seafloor.

During his previous cruises, Paull used a small ROV that could dive only about 120 meters below the surface. However, the mounds on the continental slope are in about 300 to 800 meters of water. So MBARI engineers Dale Graves and Alana Sherman designed and built an entirely new ROV just for this expedition. The new ROV is small, portable, agile, relatively inexpensive, and can dive to 1,000 meters. It can also be launched and operated by just two people (for the 2012 expedition, those two people will be Graves and Sherman).

Amazingly, the new mini-ROV went from initial design to final field tests in only 15 months. But the vehicle's simple yet elegant design reflects Graves' decades of experience designing ROVs and underwater control systems. "It was a fun project for me," Graves said. "A dream come true. We designed it from scratch with a budget of just $75,000, not including labor. We mostly reused parts from MBARI's older ROVs, and built the rest in house. MBARI's electrical and mechanical technicians and machinists worked on it in between their other projects."

In addition to a state-of-the-art high-definition video camera, the ROV carries a special system for collecting methane gas bubbles. This is not as easy as it sounds, because the methane gas has a tendency to turn back into solid methane hydrate, which blocks the flow of any additional methane gas into the system. The new ROV's gas collection system includes a built-in heater to melt the hydrates and keep the gas flowing.

In addition to collecting samples of gas, the ROV will be used to look for communities of tubeworms or clams that typically grow around seafloor methane seeps. Paull said, "Nobody has ever found a living chemosynthetic biological community in the Arctic proper. But I think we have a good chance of finding them at the tops of these structures."

Dale Graves tests the control system for MBARI's new
mini-ROV in the lab before the Arctic expedition.
The entire system fits in just three small shipping cartons.
Image: Todd Walsh © 2012 MBARI

Addressing the big questions

Although the researchers have begun to understand where the gas in the Beaufort Sea is coming from, many other questions remain. One of the big questions the researchers are trying to answer is whether the three gas chimney structures on the continental slope are related to the gas venting systems in shallower water, on the continental shelf. As Paull put it, "Are they independent gas-venting structures that just happen to be together, or are they all part of the same system?"

Another important question is how all this methane gas affects the stability of the seafloor. When methane hydrates warm up and release methane gas, the gas takes up much more space than the solid hydrate, putting pressure on the surrounding sediments. Similarly, the decomposition of either methane hydrate or permafrost can reduce the mechanical strength of the surrounding sediment. Either process could make the seafloor more susceptible to submarine landslides.

Undersea landslides are common along the continental slope of the Beaufort Sea, but researchers do not yet know when or how they form. However, decomposing methane hydrates are believed to have triggered major landslides in other deep-sea areas. Such landslides could potentially destabilize oil platforms, pipelines, or other equipment on the seafloor, and have the potential to generate tsunamis.

If there is time during the 2012 cruise, the researchers hope to perform ROV dives on one or more underwater-landslides. In Fall 2013, when the team returns to the Beaufort Sea for a fourth time, these features will become the primary focus. During that expedition, the team also hopes to use one of MBARI's autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to make very detailed maps of the shelf edge, the underwater landslides, and areas where methane is bubbling out of the seafloor.

Oil and gas companies have known for decades that deep oil and natural gas deposits exist in the sediments below the continental slope of the Beaufort Sea. With the warming of the Arctic and the retreat of sea ice, these hydrocarbons have become more accessible. However, it remains to be seen whether they can be extracted safely, economically, and without excessive environmental damage. Thus, the team's research will not only provide new insights into previously unknown geological processes, but will also provide important information for decision-makers involved in oil and gas permitting.

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For more information on this article, please contact MBARI.

Related links:

• Charlie Paull's web site describing first-hand observations of methane bubbling out of seafloor during the Arctic 2010 expedition (includes video clips).
• Article describing the origin of seafloor mounds in the Beaufort Sea.
• Article on Paull's initial research regarding pingos and pingo-like-features on the seafloor.
• Charlie Paull's web site
• Web site of the Geological Survey of Canada

Source: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute news release