CONFIRMED: Oceanic Methane Release IS Occurring

[Cid_Yama]

The Day the Earth Nearly Died is a documentary that shows the step-by-step development of the current understanding of what happened during the Permian extinction event. Since it was produced in 2002, a vast body of research has confirmed this scenario and lead to additional research of other extinction events confirming the role of catastrophic methane release in most of them.

[dohboi]

Yet another article on the subject:

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"Atmospheric levels of methane, the greenhouse gas which is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, have risen significantly for the last three years running, scientists will disclose today – leading to fears that a major global-warming "feedback" is beginning to kick in.
For some time there has been concern that the vast amounts of methane, or "natural gas", locked up in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be released as the permafrost is melted by global warming. This would give a huge further impetus to climate change, an effect sometimes referred to as "the methane time bomb".
This is because methane (CH4) is even more effective at retaining the Sun's heat in the atmosphere than CO2, the main focus of international climate concern for the last two decades. Over a relatively short period, such as 20 years, CH4 has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2, although it decays more quickly.
Now comes the first news that levels of methane in the atmosphere, which began rising in 2007 when an unprecedented heatwave in the Arctic caused a record shrinking of the sea ice, have continued to rise significantly through 2008 and 2009."

[Grautr]

CH4 has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2

I dont think its quite this high. I think its 21 or 22 times the problem of CO2.

"Under a Green Sky" by Peter Ward is a must read on the Permian extinction event if you havn't already come accross it.

[TWilliam]

CH4 has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2

I dont think its quite this high. I think its 21 or 22 times the problem of CO2.

This seeming discrepancy was addressed earlier in the thread; I asked about it myself. The confusion lies in the differing atmospheric half-life of CO2 versus that of methane. Wikipedia puts it thusly:

Methane in the Earth's atmosphere is an important greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 25 kg CO2 over a 100-year period. This means that a methane emission will have 25 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years. Methane has a large effect for a brief period (a net lifetime of 8.4 years in the atmosphere), whereas carbon dioxide has a small effect for a long period (over 100 years). Because of this difference in effect and time period, the global warming potential of methane over a 20 year time period is 72.

Or to put it a little more clearly, what they're saying is that due to the shorter half-life but higher impact of methane, over a twenty year period a volume of methane in the atmosphere has an impact 72 times greater than an equal volume of CO2 during that same timespan, while over a one hundred year period its effect is only(!) 25 times as great.

[Grautr]

Thanks for the explanation TW,
I was unaware of this. I wonder if this increased short term effect could be the explanation for some of the more rapid temperature changes seen in ice core records? I guess it all depends on the theory of giant oceanic methane 'burps' being true.

[Cid_Yama]

The forces of denial on the web are already out in force. Their talking points are:

No historical measurements other than satellite have been taken. Not true.

Measurements, both land and sea have taken place since at least 1994.

So there is no way to know if this has been going on all along and is nothing new. Also not true.

No elevated levels of methane were detected before 2003. Period.

The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.

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These expeditions were conducted by Semiletov. He is the formost expert on the East Siberian shelf relic permafrost.

He has studied it for nearly 20 years.

He is the one sounding the warning.

Let's take a look at what Semiletov has been saying over the last 5 years.

The total area of submarine permafrost within the Siberian Arctic shelf is estimated to be more than one and half million square kilometers. Amount of methane hydrate deposited beneath and/or within submarine relic permafrost is estimated to be at least 540 Gt. Amount of free gas, accumulated beneath the hydrate deposits, is expected to be about 2/3 of the amount of hydrates or 360 Gt. Additionally as much as 500 Gt of carbon could be stored within as minimum as a 25 m-thick permafrost body of this type. The total value of ESS carbon pool is, thus, not less than 1,400 Gt of carbon.

...we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time. That may cause ~12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming.

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I am the person responsible for this research, and I think we have to tell people that something is happening now with the subsea permafrost."

Semiletov points out that geologists estimate that the amount of methane stored beneath the Siberian shelf to be on the order of 2000 gigatons. (Keep in mind that methane is a greenhouse gas 70 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years with a half life of 7 years, and that total emissions of CO2 today are in the range of 8 gigatons a year.)

Semiletov thinks that if just 1% of the ESAS methane is released, it will push total atmospheric methane up to 6 parts per million, and cites researchers such as David Archer in arguing that this would push us past the point of no return, towards runaway global warming.

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Now the new paper published in Science today.

“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center.

“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”

Shakhova notes that Earth’s geological record indicates that atmospheric methane concentrations have varied between about .3 to .4 parts per million during cold periods to .6 to .7 parts per million during warm periods. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, she said. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher.They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

These findings were further confirmed when Shakhova and her colleagues sampled methane levels at higher elevations. Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated arctic levels.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. “The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said.

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Semiletov, as associate research professor at IARC, leads the International Siberian Shelf Study, which has launched the multiple expeditions to the Arctic Ocean to collect data on methane release of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. The ISSS includes 30 collaborating scientists from five countries. The project, which gained momentum during the International Polar Year, established more than 1,000 oceanographic stations in the Arctic and performed a few million measurements of methane mixing ratios of the Arctic atmosphere in the last five years. It is part of UAF’s work during IPY, an international event that is focusing research efforts and public attention on the Earth’s polar regions.

Semiletov is a chemical oceanographer who has studied carbon cycling in the arctic atmosphere-land-shelf system with emphasis on carbon dioxide and dissolved methane from both terrestrial and oceanic sources since the early 1990s. He joined the International Arctic Research Center in 2001. Since 2004, he has collaborated with IARC scientist Natalia Shakhova to develop the methane study at IARC.

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What I have been warning you about for years has now come to pass.

I know some of you won't believe even when the Arctic Ocean is fizzing like a shook up soda pop can, but I could care less.

This world, this civilization, this biosphere is over.

Absolutely nothing can be done. It's too Late.

[strider3700]

OK let me play the part of a corni. Is there a techno solution to this? Assume that the entire world turns around says holy shit we need to fix this no matter what and throws everything we've got at it can we actually stop it or is it like yellowstone blowing up. We're screwed no matter what.

Don't get me wrong I'm a doomer not because I believe that solutions to most of our problems don't exist but because I believe we won't have the will to implement them before it's too late.

[Cid_Yama]

See the chart. The Hydrate Stability zone is now down to 400 meters. The average depth of the Siberian shelf is less than 100 meters.

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[General Doom]

Absolutely nothing can be done. It's too Late.

In keeping with Strider's "horrible solutions" thread, may I suggest Ice-nine? I believe it's impermeable to methane.

Sorry, obviously I'm joking. I know of no better response to certain doom than laughter. The night I ran for my life I was laughing hysterically the whole time, except when I had to be silent and hide. Never felt more lucid. Of course it won't be easy to laugh if we all end up choking on H2S, but at the moment the air smells okay.

[roccman]

This is such a big cookie.

Really - Jay Hanson Die Off Big.

Fatalist Big.

gawd dawgs...and I thought I was gonna knit socks and grow garlic through the pinch point.

oh well - pass the popcorn please.

[Cog]

I have been mostly concerned with economic doom and how Peak Oil will create the conditions of die-off. The posting of this article has led me to research this type of doom scenario as well. None of which will cause me to stop prepping and living a more frugal lifestyle, both of which I enjoy doing. But my thanks to the poster for giving me something else to consider.

[Newfie]

Cog,

I agree. I think that the financial doom may take us out first. This methane issue is the one that potentially has the most far reaching effects but I don't think it will kill you and me in our lifetimes. Our kids? Maybe.

There are other doom scenarios that could act in the financial time frame.

Have you seen this thread "Risk Browser"

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=780

[Jack]

This world, this civilization, this biosphere is over.

Absolutely nothing can be done. It's too Late.

First, let me thank you for all the work you've done in providing this information.

Any thoughts or links you might have on the likely timeline of future developments would be appreciated.

[Cog]

Cog,

Have you seen this thread "Risk Browser"

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=780

Thanks for the link. The interconnection of many types of risks, that seem to all be coming to a head, is rather intimidating to consider. We as a civilization show a complete disregard for the cliff approaching. This does not anger me as it did a few years ago but it saddens me.

[Cid_Yama]

The subsea permafrost on the East Siberian Shelf has been degrading since sea levels rose 10,000 years ago, submerging it, and the warming pulse that moved down through the sediments has been at work dissociating methane clathrates for a very long time.

There is no way to stop or reverse this. The Hydrate Stability Zone is now deeper that the shelf, meaning those hydrates will all dissociate eventually, 100% certainty.

The subsea permafrost is now degraded to the point that there are taliks(large areas where the permafrost is totally gone) and those areas that remain are riddled with holes.

These events are irreversible.

So, although we have not yet experienced the non-linear abrupt climate change that will take place as a result of this, we cannot avoid it.

This is a case of a natural process, no doubt accelerated by anthrpogenic warming, but one that has been going on, slowly but surely over several thousand years.

There is nothing we can do to stop it.

Even if anthropogenic warming had not overwhelmed the astronomical forcing that would have made us cooler, it might not have prevented this.

More and more we are discovering through paleoclimate studies that this is a natural, if rare, part of the carbon cycle.

This time however, since we are already as warm as we are, and because solar irradiance is greater than it had been in the past, it will be an Extinction Level Event.

Societal infrastructure will collapse and we will experience a die-off.(Also a natural process when a species population expands beyond it's resources.)

Runaway Global Warming is when natural positive feedbacks ensure continued warming in a positive feedback loop. No more no less.

Since the negative feedbacks mostly take place over geological time scales; i.e. removal of carbon from the atmosphere through weathering, we are already there.

Whether we will experience a Venus Syndrome is still open for debate.

But the carbon that is in the atmosphere will remain there for millenia.

[strider3700]

Thanks for the downer. Do we have enough time to get off of this rock and hopefully not go completely extinct? Are we talking 1-5-10-50-100-1000 years away from meltdown taking place?

[Cid_Yama]

The most concise answer to that question was given by Semiletov and Shakhova when they addressed the AGU in 2008.

...we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time. That may cause ~12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming.

link

The release of methane has accelerated since that time.

A decade? I should think not much more than that, perhaps less. It is now clear that non-linear abrupt change can occur without warning and can take place within a decade or less.

There were no detected elevated methane levels prior to 2003 and Semiletov had been studying the shelf since the early 90's.

Atmospheric Methane levels have increased by 1/3 in the last 3 years.

Methane is now venting from at least 50% of the shelf.

Semiletov said even a release of only 1% of the methane stored on the East Siberian Shelf would result in catastrophic warming.

[Jack]

Thank you, Cid_Yama. Better to know, I suppose.

[Sober]

I'm developing a greater appreciation for Cid's position now.

This is not funny anymore.

It was never funny. Entertaining in the early stages, and in some types of preparations perhaps, but funny never.

[RuncornBridge]

The silence on this is deafening. Does everyone in the media understand it and have decided to keep quiet on the subject for fear of the panic it would cause or are they like the majority, walking about with their heads in the sand. People will truely be 'faint out of fear' when this does break.