The methane time bomb

London, 23 / 25 September 2008 - British scientists have discovered hundreds more methane "plumes" bubbling up from the Arctic seabed, in an area to the west of the Norwegian island of Svalbard. It is the second time in a week that scientists have reported methane emissions from the Arctic.
Methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the latest findings from two separate teams of scientists suggest it is being released in significant amounts from within the Arctic Circle.
On Tuesday, The Independent revealed that scientists on board a Russian research ship had detected vast quantities of methane breaking through the melting permafrost under the seabed of the shallow continental shelf off the Siberian coast.
Preliminary findings suggest that massive deposits of subsea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
www.independent.co.uk: Hundreds of methane 'plumes' discovered
www.independent.co.uk: The methane time bomb
www.independent.co.uk: The ultimate gas leak that scientists dreaded
www.hydratech.bham.ac.uk: Techniques for the quantification of methane hydrate in European continental margins
www.youtube.com: The methane time bomb
www.iarc.uaf.edu: International Siberian Shelf Study
www.damocles-eu.org: Understanding Climate Change in the Arctic
See also:
Permafrost Thaw

Methane gas oozing up from Siberian seabed: Swedish researcher
Stockholm, (Sweden), August 30, 2008 - Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking from the permafrost under the Siberian seabed, a researcher on an international expedition in the region told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.
www.physorg.com: Methane gas oozing up from Siberian seabed: Swedish researcher

Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming
Anchorage, (Alaska), August 28, 2008 - New estimates show that frozen Arctic soil contains far more potential greenhouse gas than previously recognized--and could speed climate change as it melts.
www.sciam.com: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming
www.eurekalert.org: Thawing permafrost likely to boost global warming

Methane release could cause abrupt, far-reaching climate change
Washington (US), May 29 2008 - An abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from ice sheets that extended to Earth's low latitudes some 635 million years ago caused a dramatic shift in climate, scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) report in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The shift triggered events that resulted in global warming and an ending of the last "snowball" ice age.
www.enn.com: Methane release could cause abrupt, far-reaching climate change
www.nature.com: Snowball Earth: Exit strategy
www.nature.com: Snowball Earth termination by destabilization of equatorial permafrost methane clathrate

A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia
Vienna, April 17 2008 - Researchers have found alarming evidence that the frozen Arctic floor has started to thaw and release long-stored methane gas. The results could be a catastrophic warming of the earth, since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But can the methane also be used as fuel?
www.spiegel.de: A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia
www.reuters.com: Burning Ice Baby.....
en.wikipedia.org: Methane clathrate

Methane sources over the last 30,000 years
Vienna, April 17 2008 - Ice cores are essential for climate research, because they represent the only archive which allows direct measurements of atmospheric composition and greenhouse gas concentrations in the past. Using novel isotopic studies, scientists from the European Project for Ice Coring In Antarctica (EPICA) were now able to identify the most important processes responsible for changes in natural methane concentrations over the transition from the last ice age into our warm period.
www.awi.de: Methane sources over the last 30,000 years

Ancient Warming Caused Huge Spike in Temps, Study Says

A chart of temperature data for the past 65 milion years shows the sudden and brief spike known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM).
The spike may have been caused when vast icelike reserves of greenhouse gases melted in response to a small warming event, according to a new study that raises dire possibilities for Earth's current warming. Image by Robert A. Rohde/Global Warming Art under GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.2

Utrecht (NL), December 19, 2007 - What started out as a moderate global warm-up about 55 million years ago triggered a massive injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that sent temperatures skyrocketing, a new study says.
The finding suggests that today's temperature rise may just be priming the planet for a carbon belch of epic proportions.
news.nationalgeographic.com: Ancient Warming Caused Huge Spike in Temps, Study Says

Siberian thaw could speed up global warming
September 26, 2007 - Parts of the permafrost in Russia's northern wilderness are melting. Dmitry Solovyov and Alister Doyle from Reuters reveal how that could affect us all - severely.
www.smh.com.au: Siberian thaw could speed up global warming
www.sciam.com: The North Pole Is Melting
September 14: Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history

Receding permafrost is a bone-hunters' bounty but threatens the world
Chersky, (Russia) September 17/18, 2007 - One day, climate change could cost the earth. For now, it is a nice little earner for Russian hunter Alexander Vatagin.
In Siberia's northernmost reaches, high up in the Arctic Circle, the changing temperature is thawing out the permafrost to reveal the bones of prehistoric animals like mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions that have been buried for thousands of years.
Rising temperatures cause Russian permafrost to thaw, leading to an even faster rate of global warming.
Some large sections of permafrost in Siberia have been thawing out in the last few years due to climate change. If the thaw continues apace (or speeds up) researchers worry that much more organic matter -- leftover plant and animal leavings from thousands of years ago, like mammoth dung, that never fully decayed due to sustained below-freezing temperatures -- will thaw out and start decomposing, which could significantly speed up climate change with massive doses of methane and carbon dioxide.
"The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves," says climate scientist Sergei Zimov. "This will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop."
The United Nations agreed in a recent report that large-scale permafrost thaw could be quite nasty, climate-wise, but since the bulk of permafrost is still frosty, it's regarded as mostly a potential threat for now.
In the Arctic, average temperatures have increased at almost twice the global rate in the past 100 years.
Temperatures at the top of the permafrost layer have generally increased since the 1980s by up to 3°C (5.4°F) the UN climate secretariat says.
In the Russian Arctic, buildings are collapsing because permafrost under their foundations has melted, the UNFCCC says.
Thee permafrost-decay, together with other aspects of climate change, are issues in the UN General Assembly of the end of September (2007).
www.unep.org 06042007: Melting Ice-A Hot Topic? New UNEP Report Shows Just How Hot It's Getting
www.reuters.com: Receding permafrost is a bone-hunters' bounty
www.reuters.com: Russian permafrost begins to thaw
www.planetark.com: Mammoth Dung, Prehistoric Goo May Speed Warming
www.msnbc.msn.com: Dung from mammoths sends warming signal
See also the Dutch page on permafrost
Arctic ice retreating more quickly than computer models project

Tipping points in the Earth system

London, August 30, 2007 - (by Timothy M. Lenton) - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its many excellent reports tends to portray climate change as a smooth transition. Although the projections are rarely straight lines the underlying system and its responses appear ‘linear’ (in mathematical terms). There are, of course, exceptions to this, notable ones being the possible collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation or irreversible melt of the Greenland ice sheet, which both get significant attention in the latest IPCC report (IPCC, 2007). These represent large scale ‘non-linear’ components of the Earth system.
researchpages.net: Tipping points in the Earth system

The highest concentrations of dissolved methane ever measured in the Arctic Ocean found beneath the sea-ice on the Laptev Sea shelf

Fairbanks, (AL/US), May 4, 2007 - The Arctic Ocean is a vulnerable environment with unique ecosystems that are adapted to harsh conditions. Enormous stores of methane gas, referred to commonly as the “Arctic Carbon Hyper Pool”, are present in the Arctic Ocean sediments.
These stores include three basic reservoirs of methane: methane trapped within seabed permafrost, methane stored in a form of gas hydrate deposit beneath the permafrost, and thermogenic methane (free gas) that comes upward from deep within the earth.
The amount of methane within seabed permafrost is unknown but it is presumed to be significant. Gas hydrate deposits beneath the Siberian Arctic shelf are predicted to contain about 60 Giga-tons of C-CH4 (carbon within the methane deposits); the amount of free gas underlying the gas hydrates is likely to be one half to two thirds the amount of gas stored in gas hydrate.
www.iarc.uaf.edu: The highest concentrations of dissolved methane ever measured in the Arctic Ocean found beneath the sea-ice on the Laptev Sea shelf

IPCC Report - The Arctic: Thawing Permafrost, Melting Sea Ice And More Significant Changes
London, April 11, 2007 - (Unep/Science Daily) - Dramatic changes to the lives and livelihoods of Arctic-living communities are being forecast unless urgent action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
www.sciencedaily.com: The Arctic: Thawing Permafrost, Melting Sea Ice And More Significant Changes

Tundra disappearing at rapid rate
Alberta, 05 March 2007 - Forests of spruce trees and shrubs in parts of northern Canada are taking over what were once tundra landscapes -- forcing out the species that lived there. This shift can happen at a much faster speed than scientists originally thought, according to a new University of Alberta study that adds to the growing body of evidence on the effects of climate change.
www.eurekalert.org: Tundra disappearing at rapid rate
www.sciencedaily.com: Tundra disappearing at rapid rate

Alaska natives left out in the cold
Anchorage, January 4 2007 - While the rest of the world argues about the best way to curb future climate change, says Patricia Cochran in this week's Green Room, native communities within the Arctic Circle are having to draw on their own ancestral strengths to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
www.bbc.co.uk: Alaska natives left out in the cold

Arctic Ocean Methane Contributes to Global Warming
Anchorage, July 10, 2006 - Global warming and its effects on the environment and human life are being studied by scientists at the International Arctic Research Center. One primary effect of global warming is an increase in the average global temperature due to the greenhouse effect.
Special attention is being given to methane, a greenhouse gas that warms the earth 23 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide (for a given weight averaged over a 100 year time period).
In 1998, the average concentration of methane at the Earth's atmosphere was measured at 1.745 ppb with higher concentrations in the northern hemisphere where most sources (both natural and anthropogenic) are larger. Even higher concentrations were registered over the Arctic/Sub-Arctic regions where human activities are considered to be negligible (Figure.1).
It is the widespread opinion that water-saturated terrestrial arctic ecosystems (wetlands) are primarily responsible for the higher concentrations of methane over the Arctic region. During the winter, however, the wetland ecosystems are dormant whereas the concentrations of methane remain high. Scientists from Dr. I. Semiletov's group surmised that there must be another major natural source of methane in the northern hemisphere and considered it might be the Arctic Ocean.
www.iarc.uaf.edu: Arctic Ocean Methane Contributes to Global Warming

The Tipping Point?
December 6, 2005 - (by Jim Hansen) - The Earth's climate is nearing, but has not passed, a tipping point beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences. These include not only the loss of the Arctic as we know it, with all that implies for wildlife and indigenous peoples, but losses on a much vaster scale due to rising seas.
Ocean levels will increase slowly at first, as losses at the fringes of Greenland and Antarctica due to accelerating ice streams are nearly balanced by increased snowfall and ice sheet thickening in the ice sheet interiors.
But as Greenland and West Antarctic ice is softened and lubricated by meltwater, and as buttressing ice shelves disappear because of a warming ocean, the balance will tip toward the rapid disintegration of ice sheets.
The Earth's history suggests that with warming of two to three degrees, the new sea level will include not only most of the ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, but a portion of East Antarctica, raising the sea level by twenty-five meters, or eighty feet. Within a century, coastal dwellers will be faced with irregular flooding associated with storms. They will have to continually rebuild above a transient water level.
This grim scenario can be halted if the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slowed in the first quarter of this century.
(From a presentation to the American Geophysical Union, December 6, 2005)