If
We Release a Small Fraction of Arctic Carbon, 'We're Fucked':
Climatologist
1
August, 2014
This
week, scientists made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean:
They saw "vast methane plumes escaping from the
seafloor," as the Stockholm University put it in a
release disclosing the observations.
The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat
more powerfully than carbon dioxide, the chief driver of climate
change—was unsettling
to the scientists.
But
it was even more unnerving to Dr. Jason Box, a widely published
climatologist who had been following the expedition. As I was digging
into the new development, I stumbled upon his tweet, which, coming
from a scientist, was downright chilling:
3:43 AM - 30 Jul 2014 Copenhagen, Danmark
Box, who is currently a professor of glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, has been studying the Arctic for decades. His accolade-packed Wikipedia page notes that he's made some 20 expeditions to the Arctic since 1994, and served as the lead author on the Greenland section of NOAA's State of the Climate report from 2008-2012. He also runs the Dark Snow project and writes about the latest findings in the field at his blog, Meltfactor.
In
other words, Box knows the Arctic, and he knows climate change—and
the methane plumes had him blitzed enough to bring out the F
bombs.
Now,
the scientists in the Arctic didn't fully understand why the plumes
were occurring. But they
speculated
that a warmer "tongue" of ocean current was destabilizing
methane hydrates on the Arctic slope.
I
called the scientist at his office in Copenhagen, and he talked
frankly and emphatically about the new threat, and about the specter
of climate change in general. He also swore like a sailor, which
I've often wondered how climatologists refrain from doing, given the
urgency of the problem—it's certainly an
entirely accurate way to communicate the climate plight.
First
of all, I asked Box if he stood by that tweet. He did. He'd
revise it a bit, to include surface carbon—methane locked in the
permafrost that's also beginning to leak out—because if we loose
enough of either, we're in trouble.
"Even
if a small fraction of the Arctic carbon were released to the
atmosphere, we're fucked," he told me. What alarmed him was
that "the methane bubbles were reaching the surface. That
was something new in my survey of methane bubbles," he said
The scientists' video of methane bubbles in the Arctic Ocean.
"The conventional thought is that the bubbles would be dissolved before they reached the surface and that microorganisms would consume that methane, and that's normal," Box went on. But if the plumes are making it to the surface, that's a brand new source of heat-trapping gases that we need to worry about.
The
scientists on the expedition confirm that's what we're seeing, too:
"We
are 'sniffing' methane," Ulf Hedman, the science
coordinator of the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, wrote
in a post
highlighted
by Climate Change SOS. "We
see the bubbles on video from the camera mounted on the CTD or the
Multicorer. All analysis tells the signs. We are in a Mega flare. We
see it in the water column, we read it above the surface, and we
follow it up high into the sky with radars and lasers. We see it
mixed in the air and carried away with the winds. Methane in the
air."
"Methane
is more than 20 times more potent than CO2 in trapping infrared as
part of the natural greenhouse effect," Box said. "Methane
getting to the surface—that's potent stuff."
It's
especially worrying because the Arctic is warming faster than nearly
anywhere else on Earth. Now, along with melting sea ice and thawing
permafrost, we have to add to our list of 'feedback loop' concerns
that warming Arctic oceans may be releasing fonts of methane.
That is, the warmer the ocean gets, the more methane gets spewed out
of those stores on the continental shelf, and the warmer the ocean
gets, ad infinitum.
I MAY ESCAPE A LOT OF THIS, BUT MY DAUGHTER MIGHT NOT. SHE'S 3 YEARS OLD.
Methane emissions from the ocean floor seen on the screen as large clouds. Photo: Ulf Hedman
"The
Arctic is our most immediate carbon concern," Box continued.
There is an immense amount of carbon stored there. "It's a giant
number. But we should think in terms of, even if a small amount of
that carbon comes out, that's a problem."
Box,
who hails from Colorado, relocated to Denmark in part to escape
the impending impacts of climate change. "Droughts are
going to be a problem for the interior states," he said. "I'm
a bit of climate refugee." Because the Arctic methane plumes, of
course, are just another worrying source of a global phenomenon
that is rapidly approaching the brink of irreversibility.
"We're
on a trajectory to an unmanageable heating scenario, and we need to
get off it," he said. "We're fucked at a certain point,
right? It just becomes unmanageable. The climate dragon is
being poked, and eventually the dragon becomes pissed off enough
to trash the place."
It
was refreshing to hear a climatologist pull no punches, while still
eloquently and accurately summarizing the science—even though an
increasing number are becoming proactive, like the
paleoclimatologist Dr.
Michael Mann,
and top
climate scientist Dr. James Hansen,
climate scientists are still learning how to engage the public in a
manner that's forceful and compelling. Like Dr. Hansen, Box has a
deeply personal reason to sound the alarm.
"I
may escape a lot of this," he said, "but my daughter
might not. She's 3 years old." Climate change may not
destabilize the globe in our lifetime, or even his daughter's—but
the fact that feedback loops like methane release could rapidly
accelerate the warming means that there's a chance rapid climate
transformation—and the social and economic catastrophes that
would likely accompany it—could strike sooner.
"If
you stand to lose everything, then even a low probability event is
high-risk. That's why people fund armies—just in case they get
invaded. We need to invest in decarbonizing our energy system."
He paused, then added:
"We've
got to keep this fucking carbon in the ground."
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