Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Exclusive: The Methane Time Bomb
Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide
The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.
Preliminary findings suggest that massive deposits of subsea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats. (Photo: Alamy) The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane - sometimes at up to 100 times background levels - over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.
In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.
They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.
Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.
The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.
Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden, one of the leaders of the expedition, described the scale of the methane emissions in an email exchange sent from the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.
"We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night," said Dr Gustafsson. "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."
At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.
"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."
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.
Dr Semiletov has suggested several possible reasons why methane is now being released from the Arctic, including the rising volume of relatively warmer water being discharged from Siberia's rivers due to the melting of the permafrost on the land.
The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.
- Posted in
92 Comments so far
Show AllGreat news to wake up to.
Maybe this website should rename itself Common Nightmares
just kidding
sort of
KEM PATRICK was right.
America is forked. Do you like your America rare or well. Enjoy your last supper.
Really? How bad do you think it will be for 99% of the American landmass? Florida, Texas, the barriar islands on the East Coast. Coastal cities. Other than that how bad?
We are concerned and should be but there is no stopping it now. What is it going to do really and how long will it take?
I hear that we are going to be in for drought and heat, but with more surface area of water and more heat, there is going to be more water in the air and thus in rain. Where are the wet spots going to be and where are the dry spots? For all we know the US is going to get a lot more wet and that means a lot more cultivatible land.
This is going to be a disaster because the change is going to be strong and fast, but it is not an extinction level event for the US or the North where we can afford to respond. In the South, there is certainly going to be a disaster.
Goose,
a runaway greenhouse effect will go far, far beyond the effects you mention!
Are you familiar with the great Permian extinction? 95% of all species went extinct. Atmospherec oxygen fell to levels where only land areas near sea level were habitable. Oceans became anoxic, toxic brews of hydrogen sulfide. It is the only known mass extinction event that involved even insects.
Don't think for a minute the USA is OK. Canada is in better condition and there it is only in the Northwest Territories that have a hope. However, they too are leaching methane from permafrost. Have a nice SUV ride to the shopping mall.
The last time I looked, there was this thing called a round planet with many countries in the northern hemispheres, i.e. all of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Canada. And what's to say that the southern hemisphere will not also be affected?
Hats off to Kem Patrick. If we were sane, we would be paying the best scientists to figure out what to do about this. But we are not.
Joe
We are paying the best scientists to deal with this problem but they have been shut-up for years by Bush and company. Bush tried to fire James Hansen, NASA because he would not keep quiet and told the American people and the world the truth. This is the man that should have at least shared the Nobel Prize with Gore. It was not Gore it was Hansen.
The Oil companies led by Exxon -Mobile were in collusion to minimize or cast doubt on global warming science since 1980. I am personally aware of it because they tried to shut me up by killing my funding while working on the first Acid Rain film in North America, called SO2.
Sorry. It is true that science has been squelched for many years. Was your film ever finished / released?
Joe
It was funded by the NFB Canada, I had to proceed with my own resources after Famous Players film chain withdrew their $100,000 support which I had in writing. They were going to distribute the film and pulled that as well. The local distributers could not find placement for the film it too was blocked and a very mild CBC production hit the airways that said very little. This is the story of suppression by big media that I have experienced first hand. In fact I paid for all the research, and for an independent was pretty extensive without a return.
This is the same now but the difference being there is the U Tube and internet which allows for the exchange of information without big corps stopping you, at least for the time being. I have been working on my climate change film since e 1999 funded in part by UNESCO PARIS, THEY REFUSED TO PRINT MY BOOK & CD OF FILM BECAUSE I MADE THE STATEMENT THAT CLIMATE CHANGE WAS A DIRECT RESULT Of HUMAN INTERFERENCE BASED ON THE WORK OF JAMES HANSEN IN 1980. He forecast than we had about ten years to change our direction but he did not have the latest satellite information on melting glaciers and poles or concentration levels of CO2, which take time to see. But he had the goods no one would listen. Gore took his findings and ran with the ball. i did not have the name Senator behind my name.
The actions of this and all other developed nations were motivated by the financial and industrial sectors and profit alone . . .not by the survival of humanity or your children. This is the situation presently with the 700 billion bailout which should be earmarked for dealing with climate change and the development of technology to limit the effects. That alone would create s global indsutry based in survival. But if we stopped now it would take about 100 years to reduce warming below the 787 PPM it is now, if we were successful. However, still the disruptions to this planet and human survival will be cataclysmic. We can expect the deaths of two to three billion people presently alive if not greater.
IKE
This is normal! DO NOT PANIC! So is carbon dioxide. This is an inevitable part of environmental evolution. Who are these scientists anyway? Who hired them? Maybe you need to ask yourself this question before you start buying into this crap! I'LL SAY IT AGAIN! GLOBAL WARMING IS INEVITABLE! IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN WITH OR WITHOUT HUMAN INFLUENCE! Do I have to go through this every time an article is posted about this junk! NO, THERE IS NOTHING YOU OR I OR BONO CAN DO ABOUT IT! Okay people! Wake up and smell the deceit. GLOBAL WARMING IS NO ONE'S FAULT! It happens!
Is this satire? There was certianly something we could have done about it when alarms were first sounded in the 1980's. But it may be too late now. The only solution may be draconian, and risky geo-engineering schemes to reduce solar radition reaching the earths surface.
Whatever. Its good that you at least admit that GW is a threat to our existence.
But rather than doing something about it, conservatives prefer to do nothing.
Gosh, thanks Miss Angell. But who's panicking?
GLOBAL WARMING IS NO ONE'S FAULT! It happens because of ... Original Sin?
Death and Taxes are inevitable but we can still strive against them.
We can do our part to reduce methane by eliminating things that create methane ... like cows.
HUMANS PRODUCE METHANE AS WELL. WE ARE WORKING ON ELIMINATING ALL HUMANS WITH OUR AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY. THE WHEEL AND INVENTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SIN. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SIN, THAT IS A HUMAN FABRICATION TO ABSOLVE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR ACTIONS LIKE, NEGATIVE HUMAN INVENTION WHICH HAS CREATED CLIMATE CHANGE TO BEGIN WITH.
THE COMBUSTION ENGINE AND GREED IS THE ONLY SIN AGAINST HUMANITY. RELIGION AND SIN ARE HUMAN FABRICATIONS TO HELP US DEAL WITH THE FACT WE WILL DIE AND CEASE TO EXIST. WE ARE SO FRIGHTENED BY THE IDEA THAT WE CREATE WARS AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE TO GURANTEE A QUICKER DEMISE AND CALL IT SIN.
Hi Kem,
Humans must kill other living things to live--that is what Original Sin attempts to absolve. Few seem to understand this nowadays.
"GLOBAL WARMING IS NO ONE'S FAULT! It happens!"
I can imagine that you were part of OJ Simpson's defense team: "OJ killed her but death is no one's fault! It happens!"
Shit happens too, but there is a reason for everything.
We may not be able to physically do anything about global warming (though, nobody on this Earth knows what we can or can't do or how the future will turn out), but I hope we can at the very least change our own mindsets to that in the future we won't be quite so stupid.
hehe thanx, i feel sooooooooooo much better now.
i'm gonna get back over 2 the mall.
ttyl loserz.
Miss Angel,
I think McCain chose the wrong person to help him. You would have been a far better choice.
Miss Angel,
I think McCain chose the wrong person to help him. You would have been a far better choice.
Okay Sara. I admit that the effects of methane release in this article won't greatly impact some who believe that an almighty power will save the chosen few (at least in your own minds)... but for those of us outside the Palin family (most all the rest of humanity)... wellll, we have to take a much less self-deluded viewpoint that an organized effort by humans will be our only "salvation"... that we need to stop contributing to the problem as defined by the reckless and greedy manner that we have historically (mis)used our industry and technology... and perhaps attempt a reversal of what most scientists point to as an impending global catastrophe. One of the ways we deem effective, is to take responsibility for our own actions... to stop or reduce those personal behaviors and corporate practices that have been incontrovertibly proven to add to the problem, and insist that those changes are codified and enforced.
You can just pray.
The rest of us have some work to do, and I'm sorry if that interrupts your sleep... errr... devotionals.
My guess is that this latest update provides just one more substantial addition to the mounting volume of empirical evidence that points toward an impending tipping point. Whether or not we can successfully address the problem in a way that provides effective solutions depends at least in part, on the cessation of interference by those mindless denialists who should be praying instead of thumpin'.
Oh yeah, I forgot... you sortta believe there is a global warming problem now... Oh Well... I guess that's better than the "when polar bears walk on water" position you previously took... well, almost yesterday.
Go back to sleep... errr... prayer. Less rant, more chant. Goodnight Sara.
Besides, the rapture is coming and we'll all be saved...at least us Christians.
you didn't finish your thought... so let me help you;
"This is an inevitable part of environmental evolution... in accordance with The Project for the New Corporate Century"
Extinction is inevitable too. I wouldn't use that as a basis to counter a scientific observation that has been constructed over 110 years and where thousands of independent scientists have pear reviewed that evidence and come to the same conclusion.
Yes, the earth has always gone through cycles based on wobbles in its tilt. But there is a new factor and it is us. Our unchecked ability to shape the world to our needs has become the instrument of our demise.
People, all 6 billion of us, produce more waste than any other organism. We drive cars, we cut down forests, we create dead zones in oceans, we heat and cool homes to our exact specifications, we fabricate substances from chemicals. We upset the balances that could offset our waste. We deplete the soil and water. From a satellite you can see the haze of industry, the scars of forestry and mining, the millions of fishing boats out every day dredging the sea.
We have overtaxed our mother and it is time we grew up and started paying back. Otherwise we are toast.
Joe
Now I have that stupid song from the 70's playing in my head! "Good bye my friends, its hard to die, when all the birds are singing in the sky." Sorry. This death by corporate greed is getting surreal.
The birds have all ready been substantially silenced...
This is what is called, "when the shit hits the fan, it blows over every man".
If this translates into reality our leaders will have no answer. The result will be death and "relocation", which we know is often equivalent to death.
_________
There's a glory in the morning because the earth turns 'round and a promise in the evening when the sun goes down
Oh rapture.
AS LOVELOCK SAID THERE WILL BE ABOUT 5OO MILLION OF US LEFT AT THE UPPER LATITUDES IF WE STOP COLD TURKEY NOW! THIS ECONOMIC COLLAPSE MAY GIVE US THE MEANS TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM QUICKLY, AS BEST WE ARE ABLE NOW AFTER LOSING ALL THESE YEARS WITH WITH BUSH'S DENIAL OF CLIMATE CHANGE.
THE MONEY SHOULD GO TO JOB CREATION IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL SECTOR AND RESEARCH INTO CLIMATE CHANGE REVERSAL, IF POSSIBLE, IF THERE IS ANY LEFT AFTER THE PRINTING PRESSES STOP ROLLING FOR BUSH AND HIS BAND OF BUFFOONS, LIARS AND THIEVES.
Looks like it's time to enclose our cities in airtight domes, connected by solar-powered monorails and underground tunnels.
Excuse me. I farted.
KEM has been a voice crying in the wilderness for a long time now, and so few paid any attention. Guess we have to be on the brink and taking that first gasping breath to make us believers.
Woops. Sorry again. That one slipped out. Sorry.
So, like, why aren't we tapping and bottling this flamable gas to use to help solve our energy crisis?
I ask the same question. Have you read anything about the means to do methane capture in areas like this?
Please think of the immensity of such an undertaking--I have. It's not the Trillions of dollars such an undertaking would cost; rather, it's the amount of time it would take to implement. Then think of the politicaal aspect as opposed to the engineering. As Kem notes, the time to figure out answers to both questions was over a decade ago. And as shown below, the denialists still exist in force and care nothing for the consequences of their actions.
There may be a few entreprenurail attempts to harvest these methane eruptions in the short-term (next decade). But if this problem accelerates as seems likely, humanity's future on this planet will become very very stressed.
Ah, but don't you see? As the Arctic ice melts, the Northwest passage will finally be open! Vast amounts of mineral "wealth" which nations are at this moment laying claim to will be available. Extinction is great business. And that jibes well with the values of KKKorporate KKKapitalism: greed, greed, and more greed.
I'm one of the posters who has been encouraging methane awareness.
As I've been saying, for the second year in a row big chunks of the Arctic Ocean have been ice-free for months, the Arctic Ocean has been absorbing 100% of available sunlight for a couple of months straight at 24-7 speed, the ocean has been warming. The permafrost on the continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean has been at its melting point. It doesn't get any warmer, it just melts somewhat.
Note: Lower Hudson's Bay is really cooking this September, just like last year. That's from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tafb/atl_anom.gif
The potential to release 500 billion tons of methane has probably created a runaway global warming loop. Arctic melting may be most pronounced in August, after a good deal of methane has been released into the Arctic in July. This methane cloud will for the most part stay regional for a couple of months, cooking the Arctic.
Now that the straight news is properly bubbling up (or chimneying, if you will), I urge some restraint. I was far out for most people but I was never overboard. Going overboard isn't useful for us.
First, the runaway methane problem may well play itself out over quite a few decades. Arctic permafrost is deep, and it isn't going to melt in any one year, anymore than the Greenland ice sheet will melt in a year. That said, we may be in for a hot lifetime full of lots more windstorms and floods than we're used to.
Second, the methane has a half-life in the atmosphere of 5-10 years, after which either cosmic rays break it down or certain plant leaves eat it for a snack. It does not build up forever in the atmosphere. I doubt the implication that humans will be unable to breathe due to methane buildup.
Third, the ocean isn't going to suddenly rise because of ice cap melting. As long as we're measuring ocean rise in centimeters per year, that's not the problem.
I would expect two pre-eminent disasters in a hot world. First, we're going to see more extinctions of species than we knew existed. Just as an urban environment reverts to rats, grass and ailanthus trees in the asphalt cracks, so almost all ecosystems worldwide are going to be reduced to a few adaptive and fast-traveling species.
The second disaster is the weather. The number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes hitting the U.S. has now doubled. That could easily get far worse. (By the way, 2008 is a lull year for hurricanes, it picks up in 2009.) Tornado alley is getting far worse. California could be really waterless.
So do we just worry? No. I don't believe in preaching doom without a way out.
First off, we humans prepare for impact. Rebuilding every structure in the U.S. to new hurricane/tornado standards along with big 50 foot high coastal levees will help save lives. The Dutch already have 50 foot coastal levees because they are sane. When I saw hurricane Hanna topping the 17 foot levees in New Orleans, I had to wonder how those walls would take a category 5 hurricane and a 38 foot storm surge.
Second, we go around and collect millions of species. We either migrate the species north to havens, or we freeze seeds in liquid nitrogen, as Norway is doing now.
Third, we ameliorate or shut down Arctic summer warming, either by artificially creating cirrus clouds with water vapor over the Arctic Ocean in summer, or by remanufacturing the Arctic ice every winter so that it lasts all summer.
Fourth, we get serious about carbon dioxide. We slow down and then stop burning coal, not in your grandchildren's time but now, not just in your town but worldwide. We put carbon back in the ground either as carbon dioxide, which might leak out someday, or as charcoal, which is stable.
United States Senators laugh out loud at these ideas. The fifth part is restructuring our government so that it works. If your federal government is too big and too corrupt to be restructured, restructure your town government. If that's too big, restructure your co-op government, your church government or your PTA government. It all counts, and we need the practice.
But wouldn't that cost billions of dollars?
The US Congress doesn't just throw money at problems without deliberating first!
PaulK,
I'm glad you posted this thoughtful response and not me. I believe you have posted the most coherent and reasoned approach to this approaching catastrophe. It's a damn shame that we, in the United States, have squandered the 20 years since James Hansen testified before the Senate about the peril we faced of unchecked anthropogenic global warming. I don't know how practical recreating the ice will be without using more fossil fuels to generate that ice or cirrus clouds and hence increase CO2 levels. Clearly our job just got harder.
One recommendation I would add to your's though would be to start a crash course program to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere by quick growing grasses that can be converted into bio-char in factories that derive electricity through renewable energy in combination with reforestation. This bio-char should be sequestered in the ground and this would kill two birds with one stone by sequestering the CO2 and dramatically increasing the fertility of the soil. The program must be comprehensive and have an aggressive time table if we are to stave off the worst effects of anthropogenic global warming.
Sioux Rose
USAN: It reminds me of events frozen in time... like the villagers buried under a sudden quake, volcanic ask, or as reputedly the case with Atlantis, the water. Business as usual till the day IT hits, as those vacationing in SE Asia a recent Christmas past came to experience, some instantaneously transferred out of this earth plane. We act as if we have all of time, and yet in our mortal form, we are flickers within the borderless pool of eternity. It's good to remember that the soul is immortal, as times on earth could be far more fleeting than any (including myself) of us wish to acknowledge.
KEM: How does your Leo ego like all these strokes? This is one prophecy any Cassandra would prefer to be wrong about.
So many unforeseen consequences to what is happening, regardless of who or what is to blame - and blame is a moot point now, other than to learn what not to do again.
I can imagine scientists looking at all the data and wondering what they've missed and what's to come. All the computers on earth won't be able to determine what nature will do to maintain stasis.
We better all quit farting.
Dave
http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/
I'm suprised how so many people were unfamiliar with the the methane clathrate-gun hypotheses that they would think KEM Patrick is some kind of prophet.
As far as capturing the methane - the emissions are too difuse to do that. You would have to float some kind of airtight membrane over large parts of the arctic seas.
There has been research on methods to mine these ice-like methane clathrates which lie in ground-frost like layers the sediments of most of the deep oceans basins of the world, but there are a lot of technical challenges - and still plenty of conventional natural gas around the world.
The only fix would be to find some way to reduce the solar energy reaching the earths surface - inject sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere - or put in orbit large amounts of sun-blocking reflective chaff.
"The only fix would be to find some way to reduce the solar energy reaching the earths surface - inject sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere - or put in orbit large amounts of sun-blocking reflective chaff"
Ummm... how about just no more drilling, no more driving. ?
Yes, that would have been a good thing to have done 20 to 30 years ago.
But if the the methane bomb is indeed going off, than even stopping all AGHG emissions today will have little effect at this point.
"reduce the solar energy reaching the earths surface"
Nuclear winter would be effective. It would also reduce the world's population to a manageable proportion. The survivors would include all the uber-rich. I think GWB proposed this 'Death Star' option in private to Paulson already)