Methane Gas And Climate Change

[Gray-Wolf]

I think J' will jump on your 'wipe out' BFTV!!!

Maybe 'population contraction'?

If we continue on our current course (i.e. where we know we are headed and not some mythical 'we will mitigate' land?) Then most of our food producing regions will become near useless, most of our major cities/financial centres will need relocating due to sea level rises, clean water issues will force migration of large sectors of population and, humans being humans, there will be conflicts for scarce resources. The timing of this is up for debate of course but is it worth dismissing/denying the potential whilst we wait for the majik bullet to end the planets woes?

If ignorance is bliss the holding knowledge must be less so?

If you do not think yourself strong enough to face uncomfortable answers then do not ask the questions.

EDIT: And 'Yes', we are all going to die......this too is 'natural'.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

I think J' will jump on your 'wipe out' BFTV!!!

Maybe 'population contraction'?

If we continue on our current course (i.e. where we know we are headed and not some mythical 'we will mitigate' land?) Then most of our food producing regions will become near useless, most of our major cities/financial centres will need relocating due to sea level rises, clean water issues will force migration of large sectors of population and, humans being humans, there will be conflicts for scarce resources. The timing of this is up for debate of course but is it worth dismissing/denying the potential whilst we wait for the majik bullet to end the planets woes?

If ignorance is bliss the holding knowledge must be less so?

If you do not think yourself strong enough to face uncomfortable answers then do not ask the questions.

EDIT: And 'Yes', we are all going to die......this too is 'natural'.

Have you got some science to back all of that up?

[knocker]

University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Vladimir Romanovsky is one of four scientists who authored a report released today in Doha, Qatar by the United Nations Environmental Programme.

The report, “Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost,†seeks to highlight the potential hazards of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from warming permafrost, which have not thus far been included in climate-prediction modeling. The report notes that permafrost covers almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere and contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon—twice that currently in the atmosphere—and could significantly amplify global warming should thawing accelerate as expected.

Full report.

http://www.unep.org/pdf/permafrost.pdf

[Pennine Ten Foot Drifts]

I think J' will jump on your 'wipe out' BFTV!!!

Maybe 'population contraction'?

If we continue on our current course (i.e. where we know we are headed and not some mythical 'we will mitigate' land?) Then most of our food producing regions will become near useless, most of our major cities/financial centres will need relocating due to sea level rises, clean water issues will force migration of large sectors of population and, humans being humans, there will be conflicts for scarce resources. The timing of this is up for debate of course but is it worth dismissing/denying the potential whilst we wait for the majik bullet to end the planets woes?

If ignorance is bliss the holding knowledge must be less so?

If you do not think yourself strong enough to face uncomfortable answers then do not ask the questions.

EDIT: And 'Yes', we are all going to die......this too is 'natural'.

Maybe your scenario above is the 'majik bullet' for the planet, just not for us....................

[Gray-Wolf]

Have you got some science to back all of that up?

?

I thought we were all pretty much up to date on the climate models predictions for the next 100yrs? I know that they seem to be constantly changing to toward the grimer end of things but the impacts have been spelled out quite clearly since the 90's?

As for social impacts then pick any number of natural disasters and see whether you think folk are listening to the 'angels of their better nature' or to greed and self preservation before aid and order return?

We only have to look back to the measures the U.S. employed to shepherd that oil tanker home after Katrina to see how scarce resources are dealt with!

I do tend to agree with P.T.F.D. that part of nature 'restoring the balance' will involve a die back of the current population. Many folk see this as the 'nasty pill' we need to take before humanity can enter into the new 'golden age'? With the pressures of land use/water resources/natural resources/pollution massively reduced then the technologies and advancements we are making can be better implemented to bring about the dream of a world with no want with man working hand in hand with mother N.?

If we find this hard to imagine then remember that only 400yrs ago 1/3rd of European population was trimmed by plague leading to many social changes that favoured the 'little man' and not the elite.

EDIT: http://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading1-Last%20great%20warming.pdf

Above is an overview of both the PETM and the way todays warming may parallel those events.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

So, if you take every worse case scenario prediction, time them to perfection, throw in a few unknowns but possibles, then we're facing a future of dire consequences?

I'd have more confidence in that outlook coming true if they could get short term projections like the temperature increases right. As the record shows, we're no where near the top end of the expected temperature increase, clearly the worse case scenario is struggling a little already.

[Gray-Wolf]

This is the thing though J', if we were talking about the AR4 conclusions then we would be looking at 'Worse case Scenarios' but today, with better understanding and further data under our belts, we are looking at 'expected' outcomes.

I think we all accept that we are missing a piece of the info on global temps? We are not seeing the rises we expect yet we are seeing the consequences (and more?) of those expected temps? The paper I posted on sea level increases not a 60% above predicted increase since the turn of the century? How do we get this without temperature driven melt/expansion?

When we look at permafrost (and realise that it's ghg inputs are not included in AR4) we need to ask 'how' are we seeing such rapid degradation across the North if temps are not at play here?

Before I was aware of the new research into 'Dimming' I was still predicting the impact of the Asian energy boom on temps so to find that confirmed by the various studies, and the scale of the impacts it is currently having on solar energy deflection, we must wonder why we have not correctly predicted the global temps which appear to be far higher than we see in AR4?

I feel you to be stood, in the hour before dawn, trying to convince us that it is getting darker and that the knowledge of 'dawn', and all it brings, must be at fault?

[4wd]

This all seems a bit a*** about though, I note with relief you accept the warming has not occurred as predicted but are still trying to convince us we are under siege from unprecedented extreme events as a result of warming.

The trouble is that the claims that extreme events are getting more frequent and worserer is at best debatable and seems mainly to be embraced by your favourite doom blogs.

Edited November 30, 2012 by pottyprof
Don't try and get around the swear filter. It's there for a reason.

[jethro]

This is the thing though J', if we were talking about the AR4 conclusions then we would be looking at 'Worse case Scenarios' but today, with better understanding and further data under our belts, we are looking at 'expected' outcomes.

I think we all accept that we are missing a piece of the info on global temps? We are not seeing the rises we expect yet we are seeing the consequences (and more?) of those expected temps? The paper I posted on sea level increases not a 60% above predicted increase since the turn of the century? How do we get this without temperature driven melt/expansion?

When we look at permafrost (and realise that it's ghg inputs are not included in AR4) we need to ask 'how' are we seeing such rapid degradation across the North if temps are not at play here?

Before I was aware of the new research into 'Dimming' I was still predicting the impact of the Asian energy boom on temps so to find that confirmed by the various studies, and the scale of the impacts it is currently having on solar energy deflection, we must wonder why we have not correctly predicted the global temps which appear to be far higher than we see in AR4?

I feel you to be stood, in the hour before dawn, trying to convince us that it is getting darker and that the knowledge of 'dawn', and all it brings, must be at fault?

Now that's funny! Think about it Ian.....

You and I will never agree on this subject - ever. I haven't got a bleak bone in my body, I don't do bleak, grim, panic or dire. I'm an optimistic pragmatist, always have been, always will be.

Missing a piece of info on global temps? We're missing vast swathes of info on all sorts of things connected to climate, that's what makes me ruefully shake my head at the utter conviction of some people on this debate. Mark Twain is the closest we've got to the truth in all this, I'm sticking with his assessment.

[knocker]

But don't forget he's from Cornish stock. Definately not to be trusted.

[Gray-Wolf]

The article in New Scientist appeared quite plain 4? I certainly do not look at it as a 'blog' or something prone to doom mongering?

If you look back over the past 5 years of exchanges between J' and myself you will note that neither of us have strayed from message we seek to convey but that the science has strayed further from j's "We do not know" stance and has made my concerns seem more mainstream.

We always knew that as time moved on Science would find confirmation of projections or proof that such changes were not occurring. As it is not only are many of the 'projections' proving to be correct but many are appearing far worse than we originally thought.

As ever time alone will tell but such delays make mitigation ever more difficult. I often wonder (and post as much) just what it will take for the folk denying the science to finally concede they were in error to ignore the findings of the disciplines currently monitoring change and projecting those changes through time?

[knocker]

Just another take on this and the new report could well make interesting and worrying reading.

"Permafrost emissions could ultimately account for up to 39per cent of total emissions," said the report's lead author, Kevin Schaefer, of the University of Colorado, who presented it at climate negotiations in Doha, Qatar. "This must be factored in to treaty negotiations expected to replace the Kyoto Protocol."

What isn't known is the precise rate and scale of the melt, and that is being tackled in a remarkable NASA experiment that hardly anyone has heard of, but which could prove to be one of the most crucial pieces of scientific field work undertaken this century.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/at-the-edge-of-disaster-20121127-2a5xe.html#ixzz2DXdKopgS

[Gray-Wolf]

To my simple mind you just look at when CO2 levels were this high to get the temp we will reach. This would appear to be at 125,000yrs ago. The thing being that at those temps the planet held less ice and it's natural carbon cycle was larger, in fact large enough to support the levels of CO2 that we have released to bring levels up to todays.

As I then see it we can expect to inherit a natural contribution of CO2 just as large as we have placed into the atmosphere over the past 150yrs?

Of course even a 39% increase would lead to us drawing comparisons of the planet when it had an even higher CO2 burden/temp and so an even bigger carbon cycle and even more CO2 being released.

This does not seem a good cycle to be on as the only end point would be when all the stored carbon was released and the planet was ice free. Not only would we have a carbon cycle as big as the PETM but also have our 150yrs worth of emissions on top of that???

Obviously massively over simplified so if you trim off 60% of such increases then keeping under 2c is just impossible.

It seems the folk who dismissed AR4 will now be clambering to use it as some kind of definative text even though the ommisions in areas of it make it a very poor guide indeed! The next report will at least try and factor in sea level rises from Antarctica/Greenland (even though these are only now 'getting going' in earnest) and the impacts of ther natural GHG outputs as ice and permafrost melts.

[gagerg]

To my simple mind you just look at when CO2 levels were this high to get the temp we will reach. This would appear to be at 125,000yrs ago. The thing being that at those temps the planet held less ice and it's natural carbon cycle was larger, in fact large enough to support the levels of CO2 that we have released to bring levels up to todays.

As I then see it we can expect to inherit a natural contribution of CO2 just as large as we have placed into the atmosphere over the past 150yrs?

Of course even a 39% increase would lead to us drawing comparisons of the planet when it had an even higher CO2 burden/temp and so an even bigger carbon cycle and even more CO2 being released.

This does not seem a good cycle to be on as the only end point would be when all the stored carbon was released and the planet was ice free. Not only would we have a carbon cycle as big as the PETM but also have our 150yrs worth of emissions on top of that???

Obviously massively over simplified so if you trim off 60% of such increases then keeping under 2c is just impossible.

It seems the folk who dismissed AR4 will now be clambering to use it as some kind of definative text even though the ommisions in areas of it make it a very poor guide indeed! The next report will at least try and factor in sea level rises from Antarctica/Greenland (even though these are only now 'getting going' in earnest) and the impacts of ther natural GHG outputs as ice and permafrost melts.

With the PETM carbon cycle topped on top of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere as a result of human activities, would that not turn earth into another Venus?

[Gray-Wolf]

I would hope that it will take a very long time to melt the planets ice and allow the carbon trapped there to be re-introduced into the system but I do hold a fear that this is the scale of the djin we have let out of the bottle?

If we give credence to the report on peat bogs and their importance in the current glacial epoch we seem to have targeted a planetary sink that was key in allowing the glacial contractions in the carbon cycle. Without such mechanisms we would just be on a one way street to bring back to life a carbon cycle not seen since the PETM.

The discovery of further permafrosts below a capping layer of glacial ice off Siberia means that we will not only destabilise the deposits from the past couple of ice ages but also one of the greater glacial epochs that locked the buried permafrosts away from the carbon cycle? The loss of Antarctica brings out carbon buried for 40 million years or so!!

I'm stuck looking at 125,000yrs ago because the last I heard our CO2 levels were as high as today at that time and that only means liberating the permafrosts (the easiest , most readily available part of the dormant section of the carbon cycle) but also the carbon not seen since 125,000yrs ago (living below 1/3rd of Greenland then open to the air and the majority of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet).

The carbon cycle has been larger than the last Ice Free Earth (like before 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous?) so we will not become a 'Venus' but we would become globally near tropical!

I am sure I am well out of kilter with my imaginings but merely want to highlight how we must inherit part of the dormant carbon cycle as temps 'normalise' to the elevated temps such GHG levels promote. Once Asia deals with it's surface pollution issues (like we did with our smog issues) and tackles their Acid rain issues (as we did) then global temps will be free to enjoy the kind of accelerated warming that we saw once our measures to reduce polluting in the west bit through the 80's. This time we will not have that warming interrupted by another portion of the planet taking up such polluting ways so we will rapidly move toward the potential temp that our GHG burden allows for.

I believe it is only at the end of this rapid warming (20 to 25yrs?) that we will see the worst impacts of the planet throwing off it's ice and melting permafrosts.

These threads were meant to discuss the impacts of AGW and sadly turned into a debate about whether AGW was real.

Over that time we have shifted into a period where changes are now so great ,and extreme events so frequent, that most have left their doubts behind and now only question the extent of the changes.

Whilst this 5 year debate rages we will slip into the period of rapid change and those doubts will also fall.

What will the later year of this decade see us debating? The amount of the carbon cycle that we will re-awaken by our releases of Fossil carbon cycle carbon?

I was (and still am?) labeled a 'doom monger' due to my fears that the Arctic sea ice would fail before 2020 (folk studying the ice were still wondering whether 2070 or 2100 would be the time it would go) I now see that the speed of warming has had to major drags on it over the past 15yrs and that both those slowing impacts will likely drop out at the same time. As the 'natural cold cycles' and human induced Dimming fall out the increased albedo and dark water warming will add into the next spurt of heating.

MetO told us, in 2001 or 02', that warming may slow but rapid warming would resume by 2015. I feel that this will be the case. I do not know whether it was a model that gave them the results or human thinking but the extra evidence we have gained in the years intervening make this prediction now very believable!

[Gray-Wolf]

I'd mentioned an uptick in Methane above Kara and Barrentsz over on the ice thread in mid jan. I came across this blog report that helps highlight both the extent and the yearly increases from the region;

http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/dramatic-increase-in-methane-in-the-arctic-in-january-2013.html#more

As is noted this is where the ice no longer forms but I have to wonder about the areas still ice covered?

[Gray-Wolf]

Maybe this is what the East Siberian sea looks like?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/01/30/170661670/pale-blue-blobs-invade-freeze-then-vanish

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211162116.htm

So it now looks like the releases could occur much faster than our current models suggest?

Good job we're not expecting a period of abrupt climate warming eh?

[laserguy]

Good job we're not expecting a period of abrupt climate warming eh?

Aren't you? C'mon GW - make your mind up!

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=siberian-caves-reveal-permafrost-thaw

This would seem to suggest that a 1.5c rise, from pre-industrial levels, is the threshold where we lose our permafrost (and the massive GHG forcing this unleashes) making a bit of a mockery of the 2c 'safe' limit?

Seeing as we are already at 0.8c above pre-industrial levels that gives us 0.7c until we reach that point.

My concerns about an 'abrupt warming', even 1/10th the potency of past ones, would place us there in less than a decade. I do hope I am very wrong in my understanding of how the planet must respond to both albedo flip and GHG forcings as the forcings a permafrost meltdown unleashes puts us way above the IPCC worse case scenario.

[Gray-Wolf]

Give this a bump as I fear that we will be receiving some not so good news over spring.

We have seen record high levels over march across the Arctic and some 'tell tale' peaks over the major 'Crackopalypse' features.

I do recall the depth of mixing some areas saw during GAC12 and so imagine the shelf area off Siberia took a bit of a battering during open water last year. With such large features noted the year before I have to wonder what such disruption forces?

[knocker]

Leaking lakes

It was nearly winter in Greenland, the tundra patchworked with rumples of earth holding lakes sheathed in smooth ice and snow. Researcher Katey Walter Anthony trudged through the light snow around yet another lake on her survey list, looking for bubbles trapped in the lake ice. “We stumbled across something really weird in a lake right in front of the ice sheet,†she said. “We saw a huge open area in the lake that looked like it was boiling.†Walter Anthony and her team were visiting lakes to measure methane bubbling up. But the roiling seep looked like none other she had seen.

“It looked like something deeper and larger, large plumes of bubbles rushing upward,†Walter Anthony said. “So I got curious: where is this gas coming from and what is the mechanism for its release and how widespread is it?†It was a new twist in the problem of lake ice and methane emissions across the changing Arctic.

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/featured-stories/featured-research/leaking-lakes

[gagerg]

Just thought I'd bump this thread with an interesting worst case scenario that stems from a horrific abrupt methane release.

http://killerinourmidst.com/

This is down to speculation and is very unlikely, but interesting all the same in the sense that it can relate to recent methane releases and is one that is down to probability and chance rather than climactic conditions.

I assume present conditions are more than suitable for an apocalyptic methane release.

Edited April 6, 2013 by gagerg

[RebeccaHowards1]

Is there anything we can do about this? I mean, we, individuals...

[Gray-Wolf]

I suppose we could cut down on rice and Beef?

 

Other than that it appears out of our hands without Geo-engineering some of the CO2 from the atmosphere (down to sub 350ppm?) as we already have enough 'warming in the pipeline' to cross the '2c above pre-industrial revolution' need to destabilise all of the northern permafrost's and bring their CO2 CH4 into play ?

 

Over past years the Arctic basin alone has had CH4 outputs to match those of all the worlds oceans combined (this without last years, and this years, data) so we are already in a pretty poor situation?