Showing posts with label wildfires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wildfires. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Gulf Stream is heating up

El Niño 2017 is strengthening. On March 24, temperatures in Africa were as high as 50.6°C or 123°F.


The image below shows wildfires hitting Northern China and Far East Russia on April 4, 2017. The Amur River, which forms the boundary between China and Russia, is visible on this Terra/MODIS satellite image, with red dots indicating wildfires.


Emissions associated with such wildfires can be huge, as illustrated by the image below. On April 4, 2017, sulfur dioxide (SO₂) levels were as high as 766.29 µg/m³ at a spot (marked by the green circle, left panel) north of the Amur River, in Russia, while carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels were as high as 513 parts per million at that same spot and carbon monoxide (CO) levels there were as high as 17,402 parts per billion.


These high sulfur dioxide levels indicate that sulfur that has over the past few decades been deposited there from smokestacks of coal-fired power plants, tailpipes of vehicles, etc., can re-enter the atmosphere as a result of wildfires, confirming the conclusion of earlier studies such as by Hegg et al.

This indicates that sulfur levels in the atmosphere are higher than previously estimated, given that most previous estimates were mainly based on real-time emissions from industrial activity at the time. When adding revolitalization of previously-deposited sulfur (due to wildfires) into the picture, estimates for such aerosols' masking effect of the full wrath of global warming will be higher than previously thought, and increasingly so, as wildfires are becoming painfully more common as Earth continues to warm up.

This also implies that it becomes increasingly plausible that, when aerosol levels suddenly drop during heatwaves, wet bulb temperature starts crossing sustainability limits for humans without air-conditioning. Note that in July 2016, weather conditions at a spot in the U.S. came perilously close to this limit.

What could further contribute strongly to a rapid rise in global temperature is the combination of decline of Earth's snow and ice cover and eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

The Gulf Stream is heating up as the 2017 El Niño strengthens, fueled by record low global sea ice extent, which means that a lot of extra heat is getting absorbed globally (image below, by Wipneus).


Both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent were are record low on April 1, 2017, as the images below show.

Sea surface temperatures were as much as 5.9°C or 10.6°F warmer than 1981-2011 at the location marked by the green circle on the image below.


Over the next half year, increasingly warm waters will be carried by the Gulf Stream from the coast of North America to the Arctic Ocean. As this warmer water arrives in the Arctic Ocean, there will no longer be a large buffer of sea ice there to consume the heat, as was common for the past thousands of years and longer. Additionally, warmer water looks set to arrive in an Arctic Ocean that will be heated up like we've never seen before, as so much of the sunlight reaching the surface of the Arctic Ocean doesn't get reflected back into space anymore and as temperatures again look set to reach record highs in the Arctic during the northern summer.

Where can all this extra heat go? Sea ice will start sealing off much of the surface of the Arctic Ocean by the end of September 2017, making it hard for more heat to escape the Arctic Ocean by entering the atmosphere. The extremely dangerous situation is that it looks like much of the extra heat will instead reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain huge amounts of methane in currently still frozen hydrates.


An image in an earlier post showed many cracks in the sea ice north of Greenland. Above image shows that huge cracks are also present in the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea.


On the combination images above and below, high concentrations of methane show up all over the Arctic Ocean, specifically over the Beaufort Sea and over and around Greenland. Note also the methane showing up over Antarctica, as discussed in an earlier post.


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


Links

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

• How much warming have humans caused?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/05/how-much-warming-have-humans-caused.html

•Earth losing her sea ice
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/03/earth-losing-her-sea-ice.html

• Methane Erupting From Arctic Ocean Seafloor
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/03/methane-erupting-from-arctic-ocean-seafloor.html

• Nitrogen and sulfur emissions from the burning of forest products near large urban areas, Hegg et al. (1987)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JD092iD12p14701/full

• Warning of mass extinction of species, including humans, within one decade
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/02/warning-of-mass-extinction-of-species-including-humans-within-one-decade.html

• Low sea ice extent contributes to high methane levels at both poles



Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Lake Baikal

The amount of methane stored in the form of hydrates at the bottom of Lake Baikal in Siberia is an estimated 1 trillion m³, which translates into 424 trillion kg of methane, or 424 Gt of methane. By comparison, the amount of methane in the atmosphere is about 5 Gt.


Aral Sea
Methane hydrates remain stable under a combination of sufficiently low temperatures and sufficiently high pressure. The temperature of the water at the bottom of the lake is about 3.5°C. This means that a large amount of water needs to remain present in the lake at any time, in order to keep the methane hydrates stable.

Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake. Due to its depth, Lake Baikal is also the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water. Lake Baikal has 23,615.39 km³ (5,700 cu mi) of fresh water and a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft).

If the water level in Lake Baikal were to fall, the pressure on the methane hydrates would decrease, resulting in huge methane eruptions, dwarfing the amount of methane currently in the atmosphere.

What are the chances that water levels in Lake Baikal will fall in future? The above animation shows the fate of the Aral Sea, further to the west in Asia (also on the map at top). The Aral Sea virtually disappeared over the course of the last few decades. Some people point at climate change as the cause. More people point at irrigation by farmers.
Yenisei River

Lake Baikal could go the same way. Climate change may well reduce the flow of the rivers that now feed Lake Baikal from Mongolia (image right). Furthermore, climate change may well reduce crop yields worldwide as well as the availability of fresh water, increasing temptations to use the water of Lake Baikal for irrigation.

Further decline of Arctic sea ice is likely to push up temperatures across Russia. The image below shows that temperatures as high as 36.6°C or 97.8°F were forecast for June 13, 2016, over the Yenisei River in Siberia that ends in the Arctic Ocean.
[ click on images to enlarge or go to original post ]
Even higher temperatures were recorded in 2015 at a location in Siberia well within the Arctic Circle.

Demands for water could increase even more dramatically due to wildfires and the need to fight such fires. The image below shows that on June 23, 2016, wildfires north of Lake Baikal caused emissions as high as 22,953 ppb CO and 549 ppm CO₂ at the location marked by the green circle.

[ click on images to enlarge or go to original post ]
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as described at the Climate Plan.


Links

 Climate Plan
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

 Gone: endemic Baikal sponge has died completely in several areas of the vast lake
http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/features/f0278-gone-endemic-baikal-sponge-has-died-completely-in-several-areas-of-the-vast-lake/

 Volume to weight conversion
http://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight

 Lake Baikal, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal

 Aral Sea, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

 Climate Feedbacks Start To Kick In More
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/06/climate-feebacks-start-to-kick-in-more.html

 High Temperatures In Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/06/high-temperatures-in-arctic.html

 East Siberian Heat Wave
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/07/east-siberian-heat-wave.html

 Wildfires in Russia's Far East
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/08/wildfires-in-russias-far-east.html




Sunday, August 14, 2016

Wildfires in Russia's Far East

Wildfires can add huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and black carbon (BC or soot) into the atmosphere.

While CO and soot are not included as greenhouse gases by the IPCC, they can have strong warming impact. CO acts as a scavanger of hydroxyl, thus extending the lifetime of methane. BC results from biomass burning, which a study by Mark Jacobson found to cause 20 year global warming of ~0.4 K. Moreover, BC has a darkening effect when settling on snow and ice, making that less sunlight gets reflected back into space, which accelerates warming. This hits the Arctic particularly hard during the Northern Summer, given the high insolation at high latitudes at that time of year.

The image below shows fires around the globe on August 12, 2016.


Visible in the top right corner of above image are wildfires in Russia's Far East. The image below zooms in on these wildfires.


The image below shows carbon dioxide levels as high as 713 ppm and carbon monoxide levels as high as 32,757 ppb on August 12, 2016, at the location marked by the green circle, i.e. the location of the wildfires in Russia's Far East.


As said, wildfires can also emit huge amounts of methane. The image below shows methane levels as high as 2230 ppb at 766 mb.


The magenta-colored areas on above image and the image below indicate that these high methane levels are caused by these wildfires in Russia's Far East. The image below shows methane levels as high as 2517 ppb at 586 mb.


Methane levels as high as 2533 ppb were recorded that day (at 469 mb), compared to a mean global peak of 1857 ppb that day.

Analysis by Global Fire Data found that the 2015 Indonesian fires produced more CO2e (i.e. CO2 equivalent of, in this case, CO2, CH4 and N2O) than the 2013 CO2 emissions from fossil fuel by nations such as Japan and Germany. On 26 days in August and September 2015, emissions from Indonesian fires exceeded the average daily emissions from all U.S. economic activity, as shown by the WRI image below.

A recent study calculated that Indonesia’s 2015 fires killed 100,000 people.

Methane emissions from wildfires can sometimes be broken down relatively quickly, especially in the tropics, due to the high levels of hydroxyl in the atmosphere there. Conversily, methane from wildfires at higher latitudes can persist much longer and will have strong warming impact, especially at higher latitudes.

Similarly, CO2 emissions from wildfires in the tropics can sometimes be partly compensated for by regrowth of vegetation after the fires. However, regrowth can be minimal in times of drought, when forests are burned to make way for other land uses or when peat is burned, and especially at higher latitudes where the growth season is short and weather conditions can be harsh. Carbon in peat lands was built up over thousands of years and even years of regrowth cannot compensate for this loss.

A recent study concludes that there is strong correlation between fire risk for South America and high sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. This makes the current situation very threatening. As the image below shows, sea surface temperature anomalies were very high on August 12, 2016.

Sea surface temperature and anomaly. Anomalies from +1 to +2 degrees C are red, above that they turn yellow and white
Above image also shows that on August 12, 2016, sea surface temperatures near Svalbard (at the location marked by the green circle) were as high as 18.9°C or 65.9°F, an anomaly of 13.6°C or 24.4°F. These high temperatures threaten to melt away the Arctic's snow and ice cover, resulting in albedo changes that accelerate warming, particularly in the Arctic. Warming of the Arctic Ocean further comes with the danger that methane hydrates at its seafloor will destabilize and make that huge amounts of methane will enter the atmosphere.

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


Links

 Effects of biomass burning on climate, accounting for heat and moisture fluxes, black and brown carbon, and cloud absorption effects, by Mark Z. Jacobson (2014)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JD021861/abstract

 2016 fire risk for South America
http://www.ess.uci.edu/~amazonfirerisk/ForecastWeb/SAMFSS2016.html

 Global Fire Data - 2015 Indonesian fires
http://www.globalfiredata.org/updates.html#2015_indonesia

 Indonesia’s Fire Outbreaks Producing More Daily Emissions than Entire US Economy (2015)
http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/10/indonesia%E2%80%99s-fire-outbreaks-producing-more-daily-emissions-entire-us-economy

 Indonesia’s 2015 fires killed 100,000 people, study finds
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/09/19/indonesias-2015-fires-killed-100000-people-study-finds

 Smoke from 2015 Indonesian fires may have caused 100,000 premature deaths
https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/09/smoke-from-2015-indonesian-fires-may-have-caused-100000-premature-deaths

 High Temperatures in the Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/06/high-temperatures-in-the-arctic.html


Saturday, June 25, 2016

Climate Feedbacks Start To Kick In More

Droughts and heatwaves are putting vegetation under devastating pressure while also causing wildfires resulting in deforestation and loss of peat at massive scale, contributing to the rapid recent rise in carbon dioxide levels. 


It will take a decade before these high recent carbon dioxide emissions will reach their full warming impact. Furthermore, as the world makes progress with the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, this will also remove aerosols that have until now masked the full wrath of global warming. By implication, without geoengineering occurring over the coming decade, temperatures will keep rising, resulting in further increases in abundance and intensity of droughts and wildfires.

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising faster than elsewhere. The image below shows that Arctic waters are now much warmer than in 2015. On June 22, 2016, sea surface near Svalbard was as warm as 13.8°C or 56.9°F (green circle), i.e. 11.6°C or 20.9°F warmer than 1981-2011.


High temperatures, as high as 34.1°C or 93.3°F at green circle, were recorded on July 1, 2016, over the Lena River which flows into the Laptev Sea, as illustrated by the image on the right [click on images to enlarge them].

Wildfires can release huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), methane and soot. The image below shows that on June 23, 2016, wildfires north of Lake Baikal caused emissions as high as 22,953 ppb CO and 549 ppm CO2 at the location marked by the green circle.

[ click on image to enlarge ]
The video below, created by Jim Reeve, shows an animation with carbon monoxide levels in May 2016.



As increasing amounts of soot from wildfires settle on its ice and snow cover, albedo decline in the Arctic will accelerate. In addition, heatwaves are causing rapid warming of rivers ending in the Arctic Ocean, further speeding up its warming and increasing the danger of methane releases from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

As more energy stays in the biosphere, storms can be expected to strike with greater intensity. Rising temperatures will result in more water vapor in the atmosphere (7% more water vapor for every 1°C warming), further amplifying warming and resulting in more intense precipitation events, i.e. rainfall, flooding and lightning.
Record-breaking daily rainfall events around the world. From Lehmann et al. 
Recently, West Virginia got hit by devastating flooding, killing at least 26 people and causing evacuation of thousands of people and a huge amount of damage. Flooding can also cause rapid decomposition of vegetation, resulting in strong methane releases, as illustrated by the image below showing strong methane presence (magenta color) at 39,025 ft or 11.9 km on June 26 (left panel), as well as at 44,690 ft or 13.6 km on June 27 (right panel).

[ click on image to enlarge ]
Furthermore, plumes above the anvils of severe storms can bring water vapor up into the stratosphere, contributing to the formation of cirrus clouds that trap a lot of heat that would otherwise be radiated away, from Earth into space. The number of lightning strikes can be expected to increase by about 12% for every 1°C of rise in global average air temperature. At 3-8 miles height, during the summer months, lightning activity increases NOx by as much as 90% and ozone by more than 30%.

In conclusion, feedbacks are threatening to cause runaway warming, potentially making temperatures rise by more than 10°C or 18°F within a decade. Already now, melting ice sheets are changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, Nasa says. As Paul Beckwith discusses in the video below, changes are also taking place to the jet streams.



The danger is that changes to the planet's wobble will trigger massive earthquakes that will destabilize methane hydrates and result in huge amounts of methane abruptly entering the atmosphere, as illustrated by the image below.

Have we lost the Arctic? It looks like Earth no longer has two poles, but instead has turned into a Monopole, with only one pole at Antarctica. On June 29, 2016, Arctic water (sea surface) was as warm as 15.8°C (60.5°F), or 13°C (23.4°F) warmer than 1981-2011. Meanwhile, surface temperatures over Antarctica that day were as low as -66.6°C (-87.8°F).
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.


Links

 Feedbacks in the Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

 Wildfire Danger Increasing
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/05/wildfire-danger-increasing.html

 Arctic Climate Records Melting
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/05/arctic-climate-records-melting.html

 Ten Degrees Warmer In A Decade?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/03/ten-degrees-warmer-in-a-decade.html

 Arctic Sea Ice gone by September 2016?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/05/arctic-sea-ice-gone-by-september-2016.html

 February Temperature
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/03/february-temperature.html

 International Energy Agency (IEA)
http://www.iea.org/

 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
http://www.noaa.gov/

 Projected increase in lightning strikes in the United States due to global warming, by Romps et al. (2014)
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6211/851

 Impacts of anthropogenic and natural NOx sources over the U.S. on tropospheric chemistry, by Zhang et al. (2003)
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/4/1505.abstract

 Wildfires Rage in Siberia, NASA June 30, 2016, images acquired June 29, 2016
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=88284

 Melting ice sheets changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, says Nasa
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/09/melting-ice-sheets-changing-the-way-the-earth-wobbles-on-its-axis-says-nasa

 Record-breaking heavy rainfall events increased under global warming, by Lehmann et al. (2015)
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/record-breaking-heavy-rainfall-events-increased-under-global-warming

 'Thousand-year' downpour led to deadly West Virginia floods (July 8, 2016)
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/thousand-year-downpour-led-deadly-west-virginia-floods



Saturday, May 21, 2016

Arctic Climate Records Melting

An intensely warm winter and spring are melting climate records across Alaska, reports NOAA in the post 'Arctic set for record-breaking melt'. The January-April 2016 period was 11.4°F (6.4°C) warmer than the 20th century average, reports NOAA. The NOAA image below further illustrates the situation.
The sea ice is melting rapidly. Warm water from the Mackenzie River contributes to dramatic melting in the Beaufort Sea, as illustrated by the image below, showing that on May 20, 2016, the Arctic Ocean was 5°F (2.8°C) warmer than in 1981-2011 at the delta of the Mackenzie River.


The image below shows that on May 20, 2016, sea ice extent was 10.99 million square km, compared to the 12.05 million square km extent of the sea ice in May 20, 2012, as measured by JAXA


Sea ice reached a record minimum extent of 3.18 million square km on September 15, 2012, and chances are that the sea ice will be largely gone by September 2016.

The year 2016 is an El Niño year and insolation during the coming months of June and July is higher in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Higher temperatures come with increased danger of wildfires. Greenhouse gases are at record high levels: in April and may, CO2 was about 408 ppm, with hourly peaks as high as 411 ppm (on May 11, 2016). Methane levels are high and rising, especially over the Arctic. Smoke and methane are speeding up sea ice melting, as illustrated by the image below showing smoke from wildfires in Canada extending over the Beaufort Sea (main image), in addition to high methane levels that are present over the Beaufort Sea (inset). 


Ocean heat is also very high and rising. Oceans on the Northern Hemisphere were 0.93°C (or 1.7°F) warmer in the most recent 12-months period (May 2015 through April 2016) than the 20th century average.

The image below shows sea ice extent as measured by the NSIDC, confirming that melting of the sea ice in 2016 is way ahead on previous years.


Monday, May 2, 2016

Wildfire Danger Increasing

Wildfires are starting to break out in British Columbia, Canada. The wildfire on the image below started on May 1, 2016 (hat tip to Hubert Bułgajewski‎).


The coordinates of the wildfire are in the bottom left corner of above map. They show a location where, on May 3, 2016, it was 26.0°C (or 78.8°F). At a nearby location, it was 27.6°C (or 81.8°F) on May 3, 2016. Both locations are indicated on the map on the right.

These locations are on the path followed by the Mackenzie River, which ends up in the Arctic Ocean. Wildfires aggravate heat waves as they blacken the soil with soot. As the Mackenzie River heats up, it will bring warmer water into the Arctic Ocean where this will speed up melting of the sea ice.

Moreover, winds can carry soot high up into the Arctic, where it can settle on the sea ice and darken the surface, which will make that more sunlight gets absorbed, rather than reflected back into space as before.

The danger of wildfires increases as temperatures rise. The image on the right show that temperatures in this area on May 3, 2016 (00:00 UTC) were at the top end of the scale, i.e. 20°C or 36°F warmer than 1979-2000 temperatures.

Extreme weather is becoming increasingly common, as changes are taking place to the jet stream. As the Arctic warms up more rapidly than the rest of the world, the temperature difference between the Equator and the North Pole decreases, which in turn weakens the speed at which the north polar jet stream circumnavigates the globe.

This is illustrated by the wavy patterns of the jet stream in the image on the right, showing the situation on May 3, 2016 (00:00 UTC), with a loop bringing warm air high up into North America and into the Arctic.

In conclusion, warm air reaching high latitudes is causing the sea ice to melt in a number of ways:
  • Warm air makes the ice melt directly. 
  • Warmer water in rivers warms up the Arctic Ocean. 
  • Wildfires blacken land and sea ice, causing more sunlight to be absorbed, rather than reflected back into space as before.  
[ click on images to enlarge ]
The situation doesn't appear to be improving soon, as illustrated by the image on the right. Following the record high temperatures that hit the world earlier this year, the outlook for the sea ice looks bleak.

Further decline of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic looks set to make a number of feedbacks kick in stronger, with methane releases from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean looming as a huge danger.

NSIDC scientist Andrew Slater has created the chart below of freezing degree days in 2016 compared to other years at Latitude 80°N. See Andrew's website and this page for more on this.
Below is a comparison of temperatures and emissions for the two locations discussed above. Such fires are becoming increasingly common as temperatures rise, and they can cause release of huge amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, soot, etc.

May 3, 2016, at a location north of Fort St John, British Columbia, Canada.
May 4, 2016, near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.
The video below shows methane levels (in parts per billion or ppb) on May 3, 2016, pm, starting at 44,690 ft or 13,621 m and coming down to 5,095 ft or 1,553 m altitude. In magenta-colored areas, methane is above 1950 ppb.


In the video below, Paul Beckwith discusses the situation.


Wildfires are also devastating other parts of the Earth. Below is an image showing wildfires over the Amur River on May 7, 2016.


The image below shows carbon monoxide levels over the Amur River as high as 22,480 ppb on May 9, 2016. Hat tip to Grofu Antoniu for pointing at the CO levels. According to this Sputniknews report, a state of emergency was declared in the Amur Region as fires stretched across 12,200 acres.


The video below shows carbon monoxide emissions in eastern Asia from May 1 to May 26, 2016.

Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has resumed daily sea ice extent updates with provisional data. The image below is dated May 5, 2016, check here for updates.

As illustrated by the image below, from JAXA, sea ice extent on May 6, 2016, was under 12 million square km, more than 15 days ahead on extent in the year 2012, which was 12 million square km on May 21, 2012.


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

Malcolm Light comments:

Most natural processes on the Earth are run by convection including plate tectonics that moves the continental and oceanic plates across the surface of the planet. Mother Earth has been able to hold its atmospheric temperature within certain limits and maintain an ocean for more than 3 billion years because each time there was a build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which produced a global fever, Mother Earth it eliminated the living creatures with a massive Arctic methane firestorm that fried them alive. This giant Arctic methane firestorm is a natural antibiotic the Earth uses to rid itself of those creatures that have overproduced carbon dioxide and caused a global fever.

Essentially mankind has again caused a massive build up of fossil fuel carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and Mother Earth has already started to respond with the predicted massive Arctic methane blow out (since 2010) which will lead to an Earth engulfing firestorm in 5 to 8 years.

The giant fires in the Fort McMurray region are a result of atmospheric methane induced heating of the Arctic and 93.5% global warming of the oceans that has generated a massive El Nino event this year. Hot winds moving away from these high pressure areas have generated high temperatures and massive fires in Alberta which is a giant fever spot on Earth where mankind has produced the maximum amount of dirty fossil fuel extraction and pollution in Canada.

Mother Earth will continue to respond more vigorously with her Arctic methane antibiotic to eliminate the humans from her system as we represent nothing more to her than a larger version of an influenza virus which has seriously retarded her oceanic and atmospheric temperature range functioning systems.

If we do not immediately stop fossil fuel extraction worldwide and control the Arctic methane emission sites we will all be stardust before a decade is past.

Links

• The Threat of Wildfires in the North
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-threat-of-wildfires-in-the-north.html

• Smoke Blankets North America

Friday, July 10, 2015

Arctic Sea Ice Collapse Threatens

The image below compares the Arctic sea ice thickness on July 14, 2012 (left panel) and on July 14, 2015 (right panel), using Naval Research Laboratory images.


The Naval Research Laboratory's 30-day animation below shows how this situation developed, ending with a forecast for July 17, 2015, run on July 9, 2015.


The dramatic decline of the sea ice, especially north of North America, is the result of a combination of factors, including:

  • very high levels of greenhouse gases over the Arctic Ocean
  • very high levels of ocean heat 
  • heatwaves over North America and Siberia extending high air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean
  • wildfires triggered by these heatwaves resulting in darkening compounds settling on snow and ice
  • very warm river water running into the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the image below.  


With still two months of melting to go before the sea ice can be expected to reach its minimum for 2015, the threat of sea ice collapse is ominous. The Arctic-News Blog has been warning for years about the growing chance of a collapse of the sea ice, in which case huge amounts of sunlight that previously were reflected back into space, as well as heat that previously went into melting the ice, will then instead have to be absorbed by the water, resulting in a dramatic rise of sea surface temperatures.

The image below shows the already very high sea surface temperature anomalies as at July 10, 2015.


More open water will then come with an increased chance of storms that can cause high sea surface temperatures to be mixed down all the way to seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, which in many cases is less than 50 m (164 ft) deep.

Meanwhile, ocean heat is accumulating off the coast of North America, as illustrated by the image below showing sea surface temperature as high as 31.8°C (89.24°F) on July 8-9, 2015.


Massive amounts of ocean heat will be carried by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean over the next few months. The combined result of high sea surface temperatures being mixed down to the seafloor and the ocean heat entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans can be expected to result in dramatic methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean seafloor by October 2015.

Currently, methane levels are high, especially north of Greenland, as illustrated by the image below showing that on July 10, 2015 (am), levels as high as 2416 parts per billion were recorded at 6,041 m (19,820 ft) altitude, while mean methane levels also reached 1831 parts per billion at this altitude.


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





ARCTIC SEA ICE COLLAPSE THREATENSThis image compares the Arctic sea ice thickness on July 14, 2012 (left panel) and on...
Posted by Sam Carana on Friday, July 10, 2015