Just do NOT tell them the monster exists

The Arctic Methane Monster

As discussed in a previous post, the IPCC appears to be acting as if there was a carbon budget to divide among countries, whereas in reality there is a huge carbon debt to our children, while the situation could become catastrophic any time soon.

Indeed, carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas and the Arctic methane monster is threatening to disrupt the cosy lifetyle of those who want to keep selling parts of such non-existing carbon budgets.

So, who do you think the IPCC has been listening to, to reach a conclusion after six years of analysis? Experts or snake oil sellers? The cartoon may give you a hint, but why don't you make up your own mind by going over the IPCC statements and comments below.

Abrupt Climate Change

The IPCC recently issued AR5 documents that included a discussion of Abrupt Climate Change.

from: IPCC AR5 Working Group 1 Technical Summary (final draft)

The IPCC gives some examples:

Yes, methane release from clathrates sounds scary.

If there is little consensus on the likelihood, then surely some experts do believe it is likely. Yet, the IPCC somehow reaches the following conclusion, and does so with high confidence:

Unlikely? What was the basis for this IPCC conclusion? 

This seems like a conclusion that can only have been reached after a robust analysis of all the evidence. So, how did the IPCC reach this conclusion, given that it did so with such high confidence?

Let's have a look. The above conclusion is preceeded by this statement:

OK, that means clathrates will increasingly become destabilized. The IPCC then adds an argument why this would not result in abrupt climate change this century.

Sure, but that's just one rather insignificant negative feedback, compared to the many more significant positive feedbacks, such as melting causing isostatic rebound that can contribute to the occurrence of earthquakes and landslides, in turn triggering methane release. Yet, without even mentioning these positive feedbacks, the paragraph then jumps to the following conclusion:

If these initial estimates are not insignificant and if it's all rather difficult to formally assess, how then is it possible that the IPCC reached its end-conclusion with such high confidence? Moreover, was there any basis for these "initial estimates"? Perhaps there's more elsewhere in the IPCC documents. Here's another paragraph that preceeded the above.

All this expresses is low confidence in existing modeling and lack of understanding of the various processes. Again, how then is it possible that the IPCC reached its conclusion with such high confidence?

How much methane is currently released from hydrates?

On this, the IPCC says:

OK, so things could become scary. And sure, there are no large abrupt releases taking place now, but that doesn't mean there's not going to be any in future. In case of gradual processes, it makes sense to base projections on historic releases. In case of abrupt releases, however, current releases should not be the basis for reaching a conclusion with high confidence.

So, was the work of Dr. Natalia Shakhova perhaps used as the basis for these estimates? Read on!

How much methane is stored under the Arctic Ocean?

How much methane is present in sediments under the seabed of the Arctic Ocean, in the form of free gas and hydrates? On this, the IPCC says in FAQ6:

That doesn't seem to reflect the estimates of Dr. Natalia Shakhova. According to older estimates, the total amount of methane in the atmosphere is about 5 Gt. Saying that more than 50 Gt of methane could be stored in hydrates the Arctic seems deceptive and appears to be seriously downplaying a very dangerous situation.

Natalia Shakhova et al. in 2010 estimated the accumulated potential for the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) region alone (image on the right) as follows:

• organic carbon in permafrost of about 500 Gt
• about 1000 Gt in hydrate deposits
• about 700 Gt in free gas beneath the gas hydrate stability zone.

Back in 2008, Natalia Shakhova et al. considered release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time. Did the IPCC perhaps misread the figures, mistaking the part of the methane that is ready for abrupt release for the total amount of methane in the Arctic?

How long could it take for large amounts of methane to reach the atmosphere?

How long could it take for large amounts to reach the atmosphere? On this, the IPCC says in FAQ6, in the same and the next paragraph:

Events in which most, if not virtually all methane that escaped from the seabed did enter the atmosphere have been studied in 2002 and published in 2006, as reported at:
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1482
and at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GB002668/abstract

Below, a screenshot from an interview of John Mason with Natalia Shakhova, published at:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-methane-outgassing-e-siberian-shelf-part2.html

In conclusion, Dr Natalia Shakhova also rejects the idea that methane release from hydrates always takes place gradually, over a long time. Especially in the Arctic, there's a huge danger of abrupt release, given the accelerated warming that takes place in the Arctic, given the huge amounts of methane stored in sediments in the form of free gas and methane, given the presence of a tectonic fault line, etc, etc.

Once released, methane won't get broken down easily in the Arctic Ocean, as this requires the presence of bacteria that can oxidize the methane, as well as free oxygen in the water. Once depleted, oxygen isn't quickly replenished in the Arctic Ocean. Lack of bacteria and depletion of oxygen in the waters of the Arctic Ocean could prevent oxidation of methane rising up in the waters, as described at:
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2012/03/large-areas-of-open-ocean-starved-of.html

In the Arctic, low temperatures mean there are less bacteria that need more time to break down the methane. In other places, currents may bring bacteria back to the location of the methane plume repeatedly. In the Arctic, many currents are long, so once bacteria have flowed away from the location of the plume, they could be driven out of the Arctic Ocean or may return only after a long time, i.e. too long to survive in Arctic waters which are cold and often ice-covered, so a lot of time little or no sunshine penetrates the waters.

In the Arctic, the danger is much larger that methane releases will overwhelm the capacity of bacteria to break it down in the water. In case of large abrupt releases in the Arctic, the danger is that much of the methane will reach the atmosphere unaffected and remain there for a long time, due to the Jet Stream and the low levels of hydroxyl in the Arctic atmosphere, as further described at:
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/04/methane-hydrates.html

BTW, how did all this methane manage to reach the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean? 

Methane levels over the Arcic Ocean appear to be rising, as illustrated by the combination of images below, showing methane levels over five years (2009 on the left, to 2013 on the right), each time for the same period (January 21-31) - images by Dr. Leonid Yurganov.

[ Click on image to enlarge - from: Dramatic increase in methane in the Arctic in January 2013 ]

If the IPCC was right, how then was it possible methane levels to rise so sharply and abruptly. How was it possible for large amounts of methane to be present over the deep waters of the Arctic Ocean, as discussed at:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/10/methane-over-deep-waters-of-arctic-ocean.html

[ How did this methane get there? - click on image to enlarge - see also: Methane over deep waters of Arctic Ocean ]

There is a wealth of evidence from scientists such as Igor Semiletov and Natalia Shakhova who have - year after year - been taking measurements in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, complete with first-hand reports that methane plumes have been detected.

"We've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said, "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale - I think on a scale not seen before. Some of the plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere - the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."  -  Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats, by Steve Connor in The Independent, December 13, 2011.

The image below shows a cluster of methane plumes, over one km in diameter, that appeared in the Laptev Sea end September 2011. The image is part of a paper on the unfolding "Methane Catastrophe".

Of course, we all wished that we're wrong about this terrifying Arctic methane threat, but the precautionary principle demands a thorough investigation of observations that appear to be at odds with wishful thinking, especially when the stakes are so high. So, IPCC, where's the evidence?

Related

- Arctic Methane Monster
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/arctic-methane-monster.html

- Methane over deep waters of Arctic Ocean
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/10/methane-over-deep-waters-of-arctic-ocean.html

- Methane hydrate myths
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/p/myths.html

- Methane hydrates
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/04/methane-hydrates.html

- Methane release caused by earthquakes
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/methane-release-caused-by-earthquakes.html

- Earthquake hits Laptev Sea
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/earthquake-hits-laptev-sea.html

- North Hole
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/north-hole.html

- Seismic activity, by Malcolm Light and Sam Carana (2011)
Arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/seismic-activity.html

- Thermal expansion of the Earth's crust necessitates geoengineering (2011)
Arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/thermal-expansion.html

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.

Earthquake hits Laptev Sea

An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.6 on the Richter scale hit the Laptev Sea on September 28, 2013.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

This follows a number of earthquakes on or close to the fault line that crosses the Arctic Ocean and extends into Siberia, as shown on above map and on the map below.

[ click to enlarge ]

Furthermore, 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.

This is a lot of seismic activity for the Arctic, given that this is a relatively quiet part of the globe in terms of earthquakes.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

As above map shows, there were 1250 earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.5 or higher over the past 30 days globally. About 90% of the world's earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, on the edges of the Pacific Ocean.

The fault line that crosses the Arctic Ocean marks the boundery between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. Along this fault, huge amounts of methane are held in sediments, in the form of free gas and hydrates. The danger is that earthquakes along this fault will destabilize methane, causing it to rise abruptly in large amounts and enter the atmosphere.

As the top image shows, a lot of methane is currently present in the atmosphere along this fault line. Methane has shown up there repeatedly, indicating that methane there has been prone to release for some time and warning that even larger releases could occur soon.

Related posts

- Methane release caused by earthquakes (2013)
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/methane-release-caused-by-earthquakes.html

- North Hole (2013)

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/north-hole.html

- Sea of Okhotsk (2013)
Methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/06/sea-of-okhotsk.html

- Seismic activity, by Malcolm Light and Sam Carana (2011)
Arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/seismic-activity.html

- Thermal expansion of the Earth's crust necessitates geoengineering (2011)
Arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/thermal-expansion.html

Post by Sam Carana.

Arctic Methane Monster

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released the Summary for Policymakers of Working Group I.

Sadly, the document contains little or no warning on the looming Arctic Methane Monster.

The IPCC does warn that people's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) must be reduced to avoid dangerous temperature rises.

The IPCC does add that "accounting for warming effects of increases in non-CO2 greenhouse gases, reductions in aerosols, or the release of greenhouse gases from permafrost will also lower the cumulative CO2 emissions for a specific warming target".

Yet, the IPCC fails to warn that huge amounts of methane, contained in sediments under the Arctic Ocean, are ready for release any time.

There are no warnings about high sea surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean. In August 2013, sea surface temperatures of over 20°C (68°F) were recorded in some areas in the Beauford Sea and up to 18°C in the Bering Strait. Even this late in the melting season (September 28, 2013), sea surface temperatures of over 12°C are still recorded close to Svalbard (image right), in an area where methane hydrates are known to have become destabilized over the past few years. There are no warnings that, wherever the sea ice retreats, sea surface temperature anomalies are coloring the Arctic Ocean scarlet red, with temperature anomalies of over 4°C all over the place (image below). No warnings that earthquakes can destabilize hydrates that have become vulnerable due to temperature rises.

This lack of warning gives the false impression that the situation could only become dangerous until after decades of further emissions.  

Indeed, the IPCC acts as if there was a carbon budget to divide among countries, whereas the reality is that there is a huge carbon debt to our children, while the situation could become catastropic any time soon. It appears that the IPCC has been trying desperately to please those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

In reality, the situation calls for comprehensive and effective action, such as proposed at the ClimatePlan blog.


Related

- Just do NOT tell them the moster exists
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/10/just-do-not-tell-them-the-monster-exists.html