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Beneath
the Cracking, Melting Ice, the Arctic Methane Monster Continues its
Ominous Rumbling
“How
am I going to be an optimist about this?”
—
excerpt
from Pompey
13
January, 2014
In
the high north, deep beneath the sea ice, sequestered within the sea
bed, sleeps a monster. A massive store of methane that is the relic
of ages past. A beast whose vast body is composed of hundreds of
gigatons of this climatologically volatile gas.
Since
times immemorial, the monster slumbered. Accumulating vast size and
girth through a near constant rain and sequestration of biological
material as the long ages passed. Until human time, that is, when an
unprecedented warming began to prod the monster to waking. And so,
during recent years, the
monster has stirred,
even as more and more of this gas has been observed escaping into the
atmosphere.
What
is happening can be compared to the, at this time, slow initial
rumblings of a climate volcano. The gas, forced out of its icy traps
in the sea bed, escapes into the ocean where it destabilizes the sea
bed and wrecks jarring changes on the marine environment. It bubbles
up beneath the ice, running along beneath the strong ice to find
holes where the ice is weak, or escaping out from under the ice edge.
And in these places, it runs out into the atmosphere. There, the gas
is between 20 and 100 times as potent a warming agent as CO2 by
volume. There, it inevitably adds to the human warming and emissions
nightmare now underway.
In
other places the tundra thaws, unleashing its own monstrous volumes
of methane, adding to the giant emerging from the troubled seas.
We
have seen the large and growing escape of methane in
the great 1 kilometer plumes in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf
and in other
large releases off of Svalbard.
We have seen them in the 150 kilometer atmospheric plumes observed by
NASA’s CARVE study. We have seen them in ‘hot’ melt lakes that
bubble with methane dense enough to burn. We have seen them in the
explosive Arctic fires that burn the thawing and volatile land
itself.
These
all-too-obvious hints of steadily increasing emissions are ominous,
not only for their current warming contribution, but for the
potential of an even more rapid and violent release. For the eruption
of the methane monster, though somewhat gradual now, could, in the
build-up to an immense disaster rarely witnessed on Earth, evolve
into an ever more deadly and rapid release.
There
is evidence of such events in the geological past. Events that have
left their black
fingerprints splattered over most, if not all, of the climate mass
extinctions.
And there are a handful of leading
scientists who are very concerned that such an event may well be in
the offing.
The
Methane Monster Continues its, For Now Gradual, Emergence
Unfortunately,
2013-2014 marked the continuation of a dangerous trend where, once
again, rates of Arctic methane emission were shown to increase
markedly over those seen during previous years. In the above series
of enhanced Aqua satellite images, provided by Dr. Leonid Yurganov
you can see the steadily increasing volume of atmospheric methane in
Arctic regions during a time of typical methane peaks in late January
from 2009 to 2013.
A
more comprehensive slide-show ensemble displays
Arctic methane increases from 2003 through 2012 here.
It is is worth noting that top scale values were 1870 ppb in this
video series. In the more recent series (images above and below), the
scale has been increased to a maximum value of 1920 to account for
spiking atmospheric levels. So don’t let the moving goal posts fool
you!
Though
we are still about two weeks away from the start of 2014 Arctic
methane peaks, early data throughout the fall and winter has shown a
marked increase in methane values when compared to similar periods
last year. The below image, as an example, compares January 1-10 of
2013 with the same period of 2014:
These
images, also provided by Dr. Yurganov and composed by Sam Carana,
show substantial levels of methane increase for the Arctic during
early January of 2014 when compared to the same period in 2013.
Especially of note was the significant increase in methane
concentrations over the Barents Sea where values were consistently
higher than 1920 parts per billion.
It
is worth mentioning that during 2009, the same region saw methane
levels in the range of 1870 parts per billion and that the jump of
+50 ppb or more during this interval is roughly consistent with
global average increases. What is more concerning, however, is that
these maps clearly show this region of the Arctic as a primary
methane hot spot, indicating the likelihood of a very large emission
seeping out from under the ice and up from the depths of the ocean.
Overall
methane spikes in the Arctic were very significant with, according
to observations from Methane Tracker,
values exceeding extraordinary levels of 2400 parts per billion in
local spikes.
NOAA’s
ERSL monitor at Barrow also found large local spikes in the range of
1995 parts per billion during late December:
Note
that local methane levels at Barrow, Alaska on the Arctic Circle have
risen from an average of 1895 ppb during early 2012 to about 1920 ppb
by early 2014, an increase of more than 12 parts per billion per
year.
Globally,
methane levels have also been on the rise. The record at the Mauna
Loa Observatory is now closing in on 1840 parts per billion and shows
a significant upward curve during the past two year interval. Though
not rising as fast as regions close to the large Arctic emissions
sources, the Mauna Loa measure shows a jump of about 15 parts per
billion over the two year interval from early 2012 to early 2014.
Above
we can see the global trend line for methane as measured at the Mauna
Loa Observatory. Note that methane increases had slowed during the
period of 2001 to 2006. But in 2007, at about the time Arctic sea ice
began its rapid retreat, methane levels commenced a rapid rise. Of
particular concern is the gradual upturn in the global average
methane curve leading into early 2014.
Very
High Arctic Temperature Anomalies Coincide With Rising Methane Levels
As
methane levels have continued to rise throughout the Arctic, so have
winter temperatures. During 2013-2014, abnormal Arctic winter warmth,
especially over the Arctic Ocean, the Barents Sea, and the Bering
Sea, has played havoc with Northern Hemisphere weather. In
early January, a spate of intense Arctic warmth collapsed the polar
vortex, shoving a powerful remnant low southward and setting off a 20
year cold snap in the US.
The same extreme winter weather pattern that has impacted much of the
US also unloaded
a fusillade of storms on the coastlines of the British isles,
breaking thousand ton rock structures and reshaping seemingly
impervious coastlines.
In
this case, the added methane release contributes to polar warming
amplification and, at this time, is setting in line a series of
increasingly violent weather events likely to ramp up over the coming
years and decades. In such cases, the methane monster’s
contributions to warming cannot be detached from the changing climate
as a whole. In
fact, it is the kind of amplifying feedback that makes our situation
far more dangerous.
Note
the extreme temperature anomalies over the past 30 days throughout
much of the high Arctic with extremes ranging from 2-6 degrees
Celsius above the, already warmer than normal, 1981 to 2010 average.
This is just the kind of heat, in conjunction with rising greenhouse
gasses, that we would expect from an Arctic undergoing dangerous, if
not yet catastrophic, change.
Is
Optimism Rational?
Given
the evidence showing an amplifying methane signal coming from the
Arctic, a signal that becomes louder with each passing year, it
becomes more difficult to cling to the comfort provided by a number
of the more conservative scientists on the issue of methane release
(hydrates, compost bomb or other). Though we have not yet seen major
releases large enough to push global methane levels higher by 50, 100
or more parts per billion per year (as we would see during an
exceptionally catastrophic event), what we have seen is a growing
Arctic release that remains a serious cause for concern.
In
such an instance, we might be wise to compare the Arctic Methane
Monster to a massive volcano. One that continues to rumble even as it
releases ever greater volumes of its climatologically volatile and
heat-contributing gasses. As anyone living in the neighborhood of a
volcano can attest, it’s generally not a good idea to ignore such
things. In this case, the monstrous volcano is so large as to make
all the Earth its neighborhood. So we should all be paying attention.
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