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In 1750 the concentration was ~0.7ppm. By 2010 it had reached >1.8ppm, and is now at
its highest level in 500,000 years. This is largely due to human activity, particularly the
keeping of large herds of cattle and flocks of chickens and the production of fossil fuels.
Methane has a relatively short life in the atmosphere where it oxidizes into CO2 over a
period of 9-15 years.
Large amounts of methane are produced in anaerobic conditions by bacterial activity in
the sediments below the seabed as well as by chemical transformation of organic matter
at greater burial depths. Methane hydrates are formed by bonding with water to make an
ice-like substance in certain temperature/pressure conditions that can be found at shallow
water depths in polar regions. It yields 164 m 3 of CH4 per m 3 of solid clathrate.
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97 : 00 : 00
97 : 00 : 00
bmob cimo ta
2,160,923,445
e vi solp xe na dedlei y
Hiroshima
atomic bombs
. seluo J 3101 x3 .6 fo ygrene
of
heat
since 1998
sah e tamil c ruo ,8991 e cni S
nah t erom debro sba ydaerla
0 .4( sbmob h cu s noillib 2
ni
)dno ce s
yre ve
mor f ygrene de talumu c ca
e suohneerg o t eud ,nu s eh t
o t seuni tno c dna , se sag
taeh sa ygrene erom bro sba
roF .yad yre ve dna h cae
ti si v
,noi tamro fni
erom
http://sks.to/heat
. taeh /o t . s k s / / :p t th
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Latest Posts
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup
#45C
New study questions the
accuracy of satellite atmospheric
temperature estimates
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup
#45B
Looking after the right forests
benefits the climate
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup
#45A
Concluding instalment of the
Fifth IPCC Assessment Report:
Weather Channel co-founder
John Coleman prefers
conspiracies to climate science
2014 SkS Weekly Digest #44
Why the IPCC synthesis report is
necessary but not sufficient to
secure a response to climate
change
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup
#44B
New research quantifies what's
The world at the approximate time of the PETM (courtesy Christopher Scotese)
It is believed that the PETM was likely initiated by changes of the orbital parameters of the
Earth (eccentricity, obliquity and precession of axis) causing an increase in the intensity
and distribution of solar radiation reaching the earth (Sexton et al, 2011). This in turn,
over many thousands of years, triggered natural climate change, amplified by CH4
releases characterised by a 13C deficiency.
A major difference between the PETM (Natural) and present (Anthropogenic) global
warming is that the former was likely initiated by increased exposure to solar radiation
causing carbon feedbacks and rapid global warming. The latter, geologically sudden
increase is primarily caused by the on-going burning of fossil fuels, which yearly inject a
massive bolus of CO2 in the atmosphere, initiating further carbon feedbacks.
Natural global warming is self-rectifying either by slow chemical weathering processes
responsible for mineral sequestration of carbon or by gradual return of Earths orbital
parameters to what they were before the onset of global warming, thereby significantly
reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earths surface. The result is cooling
oceans able to gradually absorb and lower atmospheric CO2, enabling restoration of
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albedo at higher latitude/altitude, producing further slow global cooling. This explains why
post-maximum temperatures are slow to fall. The mechanism for reducing anthropogenic
global warming, initiated through radiative forcing of greenhouse gases, is to stop
emissions and reduce their concentration in the atmosphere to levels which do not
stimulate carbon feedbacks.
TEXTBOOK
THE ESCALATOR
It has been known for many years that methane is being emitted from Siberian
swamplands hitherto covered by permafrost, trapping an estimated 1,000 billion tons of
methane. Permafrost on land is now seasonally melting and with each season melting it
at greater depth, ensuring that each year methane venting from this source increases.
Methane clathrate has accumulated over the East Siberian continental shelf where it is
covered by sediment and seawater up to 50 meters deep. An estimated 1,400 billion tons
of methane is stored in these deposits. By comparison, total human greenhouse gas
emissions (including CO2) since 1750 amount to some 350 billion tons.
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(free to republish)
THE DEBUNKING HANDBOOK
Underestimated
Dinner with global warming
contrarians, disaster for dessert
2014 SkS Weekly Digest #41
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup
#41B
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Significant methane release can occur when on-shore permafrost is thawed by a warmer
atmosphere (unlikely to occur in significance on less than a century timescale) and
undersea clathrate at relatively shallow depths is melted by warming water. This is now
occurring. In both cases, methane gas bubbles to the surface with little or no oxidation,
entering the atmosphere as CH4 a powerful greenhouse gas which increases local, then
Arctic atmospheric and ocean temperature, resulting in progressively deeper and larger
deposits of clathrate melting.
Methane released from deeper deposits such as those found off Svalbard has to pass
through a much higher water column (>300 meters) before reaching the surface. As it
does so, it oxidises to CO2, dissolving in seawater or reaching the atmosphere as CO2
which causes far slower warming, but can nevertheless contribute to ocean acidification.
A significant release of methane due to melting of the vast deposits trapped by permafrost
and clathrate in the Arctic would result in massive loss of oxygen, particularly in the Arctic
ocean but also in the atmosphere. Resulting hypoxic conditions would cause large
extinctions, especially of water breathing animals, which is what we find at the PETM.
Shakhova et al (2010) reports that the continental shelf of East Central Siberia (ECS), with
an area of over 2 million km 2, is emitting more methane than all other ocean sources
combined. She calculates that methane venting from the ECS is now in the order of 8
million tons per annum and increasing. This equates to ~200 million tons/annum of CO2,
more than the combined CO2 emissions of Scandinavia and the Benelux countries in
2007. This methane is likely sourced from non-hydrate methane previously kept in place
by thin and now melting permafrost at the sea bed, melting clathrates, or some
combination of both.
Release of ECS methane is already contributing to Arctic amplification resulting in
temperature increase exceeding twice the global average. The rate of release from the
tundra alone is predicted to reach 1.5 billion tons of carbon per annum before 2030,
contributing to accelerated climate change, perhaps resulting in sustained decadal
doubling of ice loss causing collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet (Hansen et al, 2011).
This would result in a possible sea level rise of ~5 meters before 2100, according to
Hansen et al.
Evidence supports the theory that sudden and massive releases of greenhouse gases,
including methane, caused decade-scale climate changes - with consequent species
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Errata
The above article refered to the PETM as an event marked by massive extinction of
animals. Although there was large extinction (30-50%) of water breathing animals,
particularly Benthic species, this is incorrect. The article has been modified from it's
original form accordingly.
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Comments
Comments 1 to 48:
1. Stephen Leahy at 13:23 PM on 23 April, 2011
Great summary of a scary situation. Two experts I interviewed in Feb said +2C
globally may lead to large scale thaw of permafrost: Permafrost Melt Soon
Irreversible Without Major Fossil Fuel Cuts
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2. James Wight at 14:08 PM on 23 April, 2011
And we cant expect the negative weathering feedback to save us, because it
takes 100,000 years.
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22. jyyh at 21:54 PM on 25 April, 2011
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I'm sorry hack Tennysons' poem, but this is supposed to be a science site:
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
:refers to the location of clathrates, usually a bit lower than the deeps of
continental shelf, in Siberia however clathrates can form in shallower locations,
but Tennyson doesn't know this
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
:again referring to the deepness of the layers, in 1830 there weren't to many deep
sea explorations, maybe Tennyson was on a ship that did that?
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
:personifying the clathrates, there's been at least 55 million since the last global
clathrate gun reaction.
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
:Maybe the ship Tennyson was in tried to measure the continental drop by
dropping some light emitting stuff in the ocean.
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
:probably refers to the algae present on these locations that can be quite large,
though they're not millennial creatures.
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
:this sounds more like some reef
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
:that still has corals and stuff like
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
:ocean fans, 'slumbering green' - ocean, Tennyson gets poetic ;-)
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
:Back to 'Kraken' alias a singular methane clathratre deposit on the continental
drop of Western Atlantic
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
:maybe they found some hagfish on the location?
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
:the reaction in the local deposit when their flaring probe hit the bottom.
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
:it must be quite an experinece to see a methane blow-out nearby.
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Thanks, Mark!
The Yooper
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Moderator Response:
[muoncounter] That link takes me to a blank scribd doc.
[DB] Sorry, muoncounter; I've checked it several times and it works for me.
Dunno what to say.
Arctic, from the greek 'arktikos', meaning 'North' or literally, 'of the bear'... a
reference to the constellation Ursa Major which is visible in the northern sky.
Ergo, since it will still be in the far North I suspect it will still be called the 'Arctic
Ocean'.
As to the likelihood of massive methane release. Still hard to say. However, it isn't
just the clathrates we have to worry about. There is plenty of methane trapped in
'permafrost'... and there's some stuff which is definitely going to need a new
name. 'Not so perma frost'? 'Formerly perma frost'? 'Expermafrost'?
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31. littlerobbergirl at 07:15 AM on 29 April, 2011
'the kraken wakes' comes to me from wyndham's science fiction - so i'm a pleb.
well, it wont matter soon...
i was on the loo with a back copy of the new scientist just today reading another
possible reason for the PETM - massive methane release triggered by a
spreading ripple from a pulse of magma - hot blob - from the geologic hotspot at
iceland. pay to view but here is the chap proposing the main theory;
http://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/people/research-staff/bryan-lovell
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To digress slightly, high on the coastal hills of Eastern Japan, covered in lichen
and moss, and almost completely forgotten until the last few months, when they
have achieved a certain cyber-fame, there are a series of inscribed stones, which
say something like "Please, children, do not build anything below this height. It is
not safe."
This, in a written solid form, is an unmistakable warning from people who had
seen a tsunami, and who cared about their descendants' fate. It is now clear that
ignoring this advice was bad policy.
Akin to these concrete written warnings, I would suggest, there are numerous
very old folk tales, oral traditions which were passed from mouth to mouth, that
were perhaps the ancients' way of passing on essential survival information to
their descendants. The treasure of the tribe, as described for example by Bruce
Chatwin, in "The Songlines".
Many of these old tales concern floods and terrifying sea-monsters. I would
suggest that these are precious ancestral heirlooms, which we ignore at our peril;
and which may very often have their basis in real pre-historical events - the Thira
eruption, the flooding of the Mediterranean basin, the flooding of the Black Sea,
etc.
On the other hand, some are just the deranged ravings of a pack of Stone Age
loons predicting events so far in the future, or so far beyond their actual
comprehension, as to be entirely meaningless.
I am slightly discomforted by this Kraken, as I'm not sure enough of the corpus of
Scandinavian myth to know which it might be... a folk memory of the awful
Storegga tsunami; or a load of old bollocks about the end of it all.
It is easier for me to draw a distinction using classical Greek texts. I don't think
there is much to be gained by invoking the stories of the patricidal Zeus usurping
Chronos and all of that Gaia stuff out of Hesiod... This pertains to the gods, or
God, or whatever.
Now, while I concede that we may already be completely fracked already, I still
hope that we may yet be in the condition of the first recognisable human hero to
arise from the sea of Greek myth: wily Odysseus. Who survives.
Despite picking a fight with the ocean, despite provoking the anger of the sun,
and despite the various monsters he meets...
At any rate, I thought your article was excellent, and thought you'd also be
amused to learn that your reference to the Kraken was the second I'd seen
recently.
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Try searching for "Kraken" on "The Onion"; still America's finest news source.
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Moderator Response: [DB] Thanks! We have plans for a sequel: The Kraken
Returns...
38. Leland Palmer at 15:19 PM on 22 May, 2011
Here's another recent paper, which uses a state of the art atmospheric chemistry
model to predict much stronger positive feedback from indirect atmospheric
chemistry effects of large methane releases, than from the methane itself. They
are talking about several hundred percent increases in stratospheric water vapor,
for example, increased methane lifetime of roughly 100 percent for very large
releases, and large increases of tropospheric ozone. The hydroxyl radical, by
their modeling, decreases in the troposphere, where it is needed to oxidize
methane, and increases in the stratosphere. The positive feedback factor that
they calculate (eta) ranges from 1.5 for small releases, up to 2.9 for large ones.
Strong atmospheric chemistry feedback to climate warming
from Arctic methane emissions
Here we apply a state of the art atmospheric chemistry transport
model to show that large emissions of CH4 would likely have an
unexpectedly large impact on the chemical compositioof the
atmosphere and on radiative forcing (RF). The indirect
contribution to RF of additional methane emission is
particularly important. It is shown that if global methane
emissions were to increase by factors of 2.5 and 5.2 above
current emissions, the indirect contributions to RF would be
about 250% and 400%, respectively, of the RF that can be
attributed to directly emitted methane alone.
It's a very important result, IMO, which could provide a bridge from mild CO2
based warming to runaway methane and atmospheric chemistry change based
greenhouse heating.
It's a very different atmosphere that they are talking about, with sustained
methane release rates of 4 to 13 times those of today. Stratospheric water vapor
and stratospheric hydroxyl radical increase, tropospheric hydroxyl radical
decreases, and tropospheric ozone increases, leading to indirect warming several
times that of the warming from methane itself.
It's particularly worrisome because this appears to be an honest result, resulting
from a fair query of a state of the art atmospheric chemistry transport model.
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If this work holds up, it may help explain the strong positive feedback of past
apparent methane catastrophes including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal
Maximum and the End Permian mass extinction, I think.
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Fitting a curve to their results, and projecting it into the future, the additional 70
W/m2 necessary according to some experts to totally destabilize the climate is
reached at methane concentrations of a few hundred to a couple of thousand
ppm of methane.
I hope that other readers of Skeptical Science, and perhaps the owners of this
site will look at this new atmospheric chemistry result, do some similar math, and
let us know the results. I'll keep working on it, myself, too, and posting the results.
I hope that the authors of the model will query their model about the results of
methane concentrations of hundreds of ppm, even if those results are not
scientifically valid, to give the rest of us some indication of the probabilities of a
true runaway destabilization of the climate.
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