Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats

Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats

by Steve Connor

  

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov of the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the 8th joint US-Russia cruise of the East Siberian Arctic seas, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said.

"I was most impressed by the shear scale and the high density of the plumes.  Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them," he said.

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tons of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire Arctic region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were in the region of 8 million tons a year but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the true scale of the phenomenon.

In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast, in cooperating with the University of Georgia Athens. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.

"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," he said.

Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. He is now preparing the study for publication in a scientific journal.

The total amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the overall quantity of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the polar region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

Natalia Shakhova, a colleague at the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that the Arctic is becoming a major source of atmospheric methane and the concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas have risen dramatically since pre-industrial times, largely due to agriculture.

However, with the melting of Arctic sea ice and permafrost, the huge stores of methane that have been locked away underground for many thousands of years might be released over a relatively short period of time, Dr Shakhova said.

"I am concerned about this process, I am really concerned. But no-one can tell the timescale of catastrophic releases. There is a probability of future massive releases might occur within the decadal scale, but to be more accurate about how high that probability is, we just don't know," Dr Shakova said.

"Methane released from the Arctic shelf deposits contributes to global increase and the best evidence for that is the higher concentration of atmospheric methane above the Arctic Ocean," she said.

"The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That's a huge increase, between two and three times, and this has never happened in the history of the planet," she added.

Each methane molecule is about 70 times more potent in terms of trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide. However, because methane it broken down more rapidly in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, scientist calculate that methane is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a hundred-year cycle.

From The Independent (UK) @ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats-6276278.html

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The Mammoth in the Freezer: Sea Level Rises

The mammoth in the freezer

While various factions debate the causes of global warming we’re all in danger of ignoring its undeniable and rapidly accelerating effects. Policy makers regard official projections on sea-level rise as exaggeration, but the figures have been understated, argues John Collee…

 

Scientists are, by their nature, conservative creatures. A single unfounded claim can forfeit their credibility and professional reputation for life.So it's not surprising that, in order to avoid any accusations of bias, members of the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have taken pains to avoid making claims that may seem exaggerated or alarmist.

IPCC wording is routinely thrashed out by committees and subcommittees until anything that may be remotely construed as environmentalist propaganda has been expunged from the text. Thus, even though the panel's examination of global climate began in the '80s, it was not until the second report in 1995 that the authors claimed "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global warming".Even this modest statement, based on 15 years of fairly sound evidence, was considered too strong by the oil and coal lobbies. 

Dr Ben Santer, the lead author of that chapter, was accused of scientific fraud in The Wall Street Journal and called before the US Senate to justify himself. Santer was vindicated, but his story gives you an idea of how high are the stakes and how dirty the fighting can get.So never let it be said the IPCC is a coalition of unaccountable hotheads given to wild overstatement.On the contrary, its ranks include many scientists who believe that the panel routinely understates the dangers we face.

The problem is compounded by the IPCC being such a huge organisation, subject to so many internal checks and balances. With nearly 4000 authors, contributors and reviewers in more than 130 countries, submissions cannot be reviewed unless received a year in advance. The Fourth (2007) IPCC Report includes nothing more recent than papers published before July 2006, detailing research often completed in 2005.

 

So governments are forming policy in 2009 based on data more than four years old. The next IPCC report will not be available until 2013.

For a problem advancing at warp speed, this process is far too ponderous. The 2007 report's projections for Artic ice melt were questionable the year they were published. Based on 2005 data, they predicted Arctic sea ice would survive until century's end, but satellite observations in September 2006 and 2007 revealed a much steeper trajectory of decline than anyone predicted. 

While it is dangerous to extrapolate from the current steep line of descent, it's valid to ask what this says about other IPCC predictions, on sea level rise for example.Sea ice is floating ice. When it melts, sea levels are largely unaffected. Land-based ice does raise sea levels, but in the vast and hostile terrain of the Greenland ice sheet the exact degree of melting is difficult to measure.In 2005, when the latest IPCC report was being assembled, there was relatively little data and no reliable computer models for the behaviour of the land-based Greenland ice sheet. Changes were certainly happening: surface melting, ice earthquakes, increased glacier flow rates. 

But no one could reliably offer a prediction of the speed and extent of changes over the whole ice sheet.Ice-sheet dynamics are immensely complex, but you witness the thawing process at its simplest whenever you defrost the freezer.When temperatures first rise, nothing much seems to happen. In the second phase, melting becomes visible on the surface, and this surface water causes much more ice to liquefy. In the third phase this melt water tracks through the solid ice, finally producing a honeycomb of chasms and passages. In the fourth phase the whole fragile structure collapses and floods the kitchen floor.

That rather facile model is greatly affected by Greenland's scale, altitude and topography, but it is now almost certain that this "wet process" was underestimated in IPCC's fourth report. Late in 2006, as conservative ice-melt figures were being prepared for publication, Arctic field workers on the margins of Greenland were already reporting vast "moulins" of meltwater pouring down crevasses in the Greenland glaciers, lubricating the rock underneath and hastening glacier flow.How these factors affect ice loss is open to question, but the proof of serious loss of ice globally lies in the satellite data. In 2007 James Hansen of NASA's Goddard institute wrote that ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica were diminishing by about 150 cubic kilometres a year - at least double the rates of several years ago.

Hansen added: "I find it almost inconceivable that 'business as usual' will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century."His logic went like this: sea level rise is now 3.1 millimetres a year. Allowing for the rise due to thermal expansion of water (warm water takes up more space than cold water), we can say that at least 1 millimetre a year (1 centimetre a decade) is due to melting ice. 

That component has approximately doubled in the past decade.If you apply a constant forcing (in this case, temperature rise), then, after overcoming inertia, you create a constant acceleration. One might therefore expect the doubling to continue; a centimetre this decade, plus two centimetres next, plus four, plus eight, plus 16, plus 32 and so on would make five metres by the end of the century.It is currently debatable whether things could get that bad.

High-altitude ice is relatively stable and is augmented by new snowfall. There may be physical barriers blocking potential ice flow down to the lower levels where thawing is most rapid. This was detailed in a paper last year by Tad Pfeffer and colleagues at the University of Colorado, who predicted sea level rises of 0.8 to two metres by the end of the century. They favoured the lower estimate, which was nonetheless over the maximum projected by the IPCC.Hansen is convinced that two metres is the minimum sea-level rise we can expect this century if we carry on business as usual. He says the most recent studies post-date the Pfeffer findings and seem to confirm the two-metre-plus projections.

 

This is serious. A rise of just 25 centimetres would result in many millions of environmental refugees. A rise of 1 metre would erode up to 100 metres inshore. Half a metre, plus storm surges, would threaten many populous cities - Manhattan, London, Bangkok, Singapore. With Australians moving en masse to the coast, we should factor the new sea-level data into our planning decisions now.

Three other conclusions arise from all this. International climate experts need to find a way of reviewing and delivering more up-to-date information. It is hard enough to get policy makers to set targets, more so when they cannot see how fast the goalposts are moving. Secondly, we need to pressure politicians to quit taking baby steps and start making hard decisions for a carbon neutral future. 

A 25 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions between 2000 and 2020 is being sold to us as a cause for celebration, but it is about half what we need if the figures are properly addressed. A huge amount could be achieved short-term if Canberra [or insert your local Capital - Ed] listened to energy-efficiency experts rather than oil and coal lobbyists.Thirdly, if our politicians will not confront the full horror of these calculations, we must do some confronting ourselves.We all need to be far better educated on climate change, and we need to get much better at spreading the message in TV ads, billboards and internet campaigns.Scientists are conservative and lack the money and resources to advertise their point of view.

Expecting them to beat the coal lobby in [your nation’s capital] is like sending two men in a [tin rowboat] to disarm North Korea.If we stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow we would still be committed to twice the global warming, which is now shrinking the Arctic sea ice at a wholesale rate. 

We need radical immediate action and, yet, we seem gripped with the strange numb complacency that characterised the world before the last great global convulsion in 1939.I have a nightmare vision of [Australian Prime Monster] Kevin Rudd returning from the Copenhagen climate summit in December, congratulating himself on having nailed our emission cuts to 10 or 20 per cent - figures that will have not the slightest impact on the coming terrible catastrophe.I fear that it will be Rudd's legacy to history, like the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain with his useless truce agreement: "I have in my hand a piece of paper …", deaf to the words of Churchill (and, more recently, Al Gore): 

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."

 

June 6, 2009

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http://vrstudio.buffalo.edu/~depape/warming/europeMap.jpg

http://vrstudio.buffalo.edu/~depape/warming/americaMap.jpg

John Collee is a Sydney writer.

From the Sydney Morning Herald - http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/the-mammoth-in-the-freezer-20090605-byhl.html?page=-1

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Sea Levels Likely to Rise Much Faster Than Was Predicted

Sea Levels Likely to Rise Much Faster Than Was Predicted

by Steve Connor Global warming is causing the Greenland ice cap to disintegrate far faster than anyone predicted. A study of the region's massive ice sheet warns that sea levels may - as a consequence - rise more dramatically than expected. Scientists have found that many of the huge glaciers of Greenland are moving at an accelerating rate - dumping twice as much ice into the sea than five years ago - indicating that the ice sheet is undergoing a potentially catastrophic breakup. The implications of the research are dramatic given Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by up to 21ft, a disaster scenario that would result in the flooding of some of the world's major population centres, including all of Britain's city ports. Satellite measurements of the entire land mass of Greenland show that the speed at which the glaciers are moving to the sea has increased significantly over the past 10 years with some glaciers moving three times faster than in the mid-1990s. Scientists believe that computer models of how the Greenland ice sheet will react to global warming have seriously underestimated the threat posed by sea levels that could rise far more quickly than envisaged. The latest study, presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in St Louis, shows that rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the "lubricant" of melt water forming at their base. Eric Rignot, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said that computer models used by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change have not adequately taken into account the amount of ice falling into the sea from glacial movements. Yet the satellite study shows that about two-thirds of the sea-level rise caused by the Greenland ice sheet is due to icebergs breaking off from fast-moving glaciers rather than simply the result of water running off from melting ice. "In simple terms, the ice sheet is breaking up rather than melting. It's not a surprise in itself but it is a surprise to see the magnitude of the changes. These big glaciers seem to be accelerating, they seem to be going faster and faster to the sea," Dr Rignot said. "This is not predicted by the current computer models. The fact is the glaciers of Greenland are evolving faster than we thought and the models have to be adjusted to catch up with these observations," he said. The Greenland ice sheet covers an area of 1.7 million sq km - about the size of Mexico - and, in places, is up to 3km thick. It formed over thousands of years by the gradual accumulation of ice and snow but now its disintegration could occur in decades or centuries. Over the past 20 years, the air temperature of Greenland has risen by 3C and computer models suggested it would take at least 1,000 years for the ice sheet to melt completely. But the latest study suggests that glaciers moving at an accelerating rate could bring about a much faster change. "The behaviour of the glaciers that dump ice into the sea is the most important aspect of understanding how an ice sheet will evolve in a changing climate," Dr Rignot said. "It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes. Climate warming can work in different ways but, generally speaking, if you warm up the ice sheet, the glacier will flow faster," he said. The ice "balance sheet" of Greenland is complex but - in simple terms - it depends on the amount of snow that falls, the amount of ice that melts as run-off and the amount of ice that falls directly into the sea in the form of icebergs "calving" from moving glaciers. Satellites show that the glaciers in the south of Greenland are now moving much faster than they were 10 years ago. Scientists estimate that, in 1996, glaciers deposited about 50 cubic km of ice into the sea. In 2005 it had risen to 150 cubic km of ice. Details of the latest study, published in the journal Science, show that Greenland now accounts for an increase in global sea levels of about 0.5 millimetres per year - compared to a total sea level rise of 3mm per year. When previous studies of the ice balance are taken into account, the researchers calculated that the overall amount of ice dumped into the sea increased from 90 cubic km in 1996 to 224 cubic km in 2005. Dr Rignot said that there are now signs that the more northerly glaciers of Greenland are beginning to adopt the pattern of movements seen by those in the south. "The southern half of Greenland is reacting to what we think is climate warming. The northern half is waiting, but I don't think it's going to take long," he said. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0217-06.htm

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