Methane readings in the Arctic

Observations about methane readings

Seemorerocks

On 25 May I posted an alert of extra high methane readings above Barrow, Alaska 

2845 ppb methane reading at Barrow, Alaska

On the basis of developing news of rapidly melting ice in the Arctic and especially in the ocean above Siberia, which is ice-free and with water that is above freezing (which raises the spectre of a rapid increase in the release of methane) I decided to check exactly what I could find out.

I decided to check the one source that I know about from May - that is readings from NOAA from their station at Barrrow AL (I do not know how to find direct readings for northern Siberia)

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=BRW&program=ccgg&type=ts

I put in the values as earlier suggested by Sam Carana (under 'time series')

methane

in-situ data

When I opted for data from this year, I got the following whereby data stoped in February

However, when I broadened the search to a multi-year one I got a chart that extends into this year.

What I observe from this is that the line of the mean readings seems to reflect the patterns of previous years, but that peak readings are much higher (more than 2000ppb). 

The individual dots reflect spikes in readings (including the one of 2845 ppb in May)

 

The latest data presented by Sam Carana in Arctic News reflects a similar situation with average readings remaining much the same,but with higher daily peak readings.

If you are a methane 'sceptic' you would want to look at the average readings but the preponderance of daily peak readings must be highly significant.

It is the trend of readings (prepared by Sam Carana) of methane readings for the two weeks from July 19 to August 4 that give reason to be worried.

With the situation with the data from the NOAA website does indicate that perhaps, at best NOAA are messing up, or, at worst, removing data they don't like.

While we are using about this I wonder what this news from today is about.

A problem with the F17 DMSP Satellite

August 7, 2015

On August 5, 2015, a problem arose with the F17 DMSP satellite that provides data to generate the daily maps and time series in the NSIDC Sea Ice Index and Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis, as well as the Greenland Today daily melt extent. This has led to spurious values of sea ice for both the Arctic and Antarctic, and unreliable melt data for Greenland for this date. NSIDC is in the process of removing the spurious data, and will be closely monitoring the incoming F17 data stream.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/08/a-problem-with-the-f17-dmsp-satellite/

In the meantime I am watching the whole situation in the Arctic with great trepediation and l'll be watching it closely in the coming weeks.