Remember this BBC story? Turns out it is another one for the Climate FAIL file.
All sorts of wailing came from that by climate alarmists. The New Scientist claimed there were megatonnes of methane bubbling out at that time. It was even billed under “Arctic Climate Emergency” All of this came from a single paper published in the AGU Geophysical Research Letters. In January 2012, perhaps sensing that it really was hyped up, an essay at RealClimate “Much ado about methane” said:
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, but it also has an awesome power to really get people worked up, compared to other equally frightening pieces of the climate story.
Yep. I can recall lots of terrified comments here at WUWT about this, plus some emails along the lines of “if you don’t pay attention to this you’re going to denialist hell”.
Well, a new more comprehensive on-site study has been done, and it has just been announced by the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel:
Gas Outlets off Spitsbergen Are No New Phenomenon
Expedition to the Greenland Sea with Surprising Results
Marine scientists from Kiel, together with colleagues from Bremen, Great Britain, Switzerland and Norway, spent four and a half weeks examining methane emanation from the sea bed off the coast of Spitsbergen with the German research vessel MARIA S. MERIAN. There they gained a very differentiated picture: Several of the gas outlets have been active for hundreds of years.
Frequent storms and sub-zero temperatures – nature drove the marine researchers that were assessing gas outlets on the sea bed off the coast of Spitsbergen for four and a half weeks to their limits. Nevertheless the participants were very pleased when they returned: “We were able to gather many samples and data in the affected area. With the submersible JAGO we even managed to form an impression of the sea bed and the gas vents” summarised the chief scientist Professor Dr. Christian Berndt from GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.
The reason for the expedition was the supposition that ice-like methane hydrates stored in the sea bed were dissolving due to rising water temperatures. “Methane hydrate is only stable at very low temperatures and under very high pressure. The gas outlets off Spitsbergen lie approximately at a depth which marks the border between stability and dissolution. Therefore we presumed that a measurable rise in water temperature in the Arctic could dissolve the hydrates from the top downwards” explained Professor Berndt. Methane could then be released into the water or even into the atmosphere, where it would act as a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
In fact, what the researchers found in the area offers a much more differentiated picture. Above all the fear that the gas emanation is a consequence of the current rising sea temperature does not seem to apply. At least some of the gas outlets have been active for longer. Carbonate deposits, which form when microorganisms convert the escaping methane, were found on the vents. “At numerous emergences we found deposits that might already be hundreds of years old. This estimation is indeed only based on the size of the samples and empirical values as to how fast such deposits grow. On any account, the methane sources must be older” says Professor Berndt. The exact age of the carbonates will be determined from samples in GEOMAR’s laboratories.
“Details will only be known in a few months when the data has been analysed; however the observed gas emanations are probably not caused by human influence” says Berndt. There are two other possible explanations instead: Either they are symptoms of a long term temperature rise or they show a seasonal process where gas hydrates continuously melt and reform.
Another interesting observation made on the expedition, was that a very active microbial community that consumes the methane has established itself on the sea bed. “We were able to detect high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide, which is an indication of methane consuming microbes in the sea bed, and, with the help of JAGO, discovered typical biocoenoses that we recognised from other, older methane outlets” explained microbiologist Professor Dr. Tina Treude from GEOMAR, who also took part in the expedition. “Methane consuming microbes grow only slowly in the sea bed, thus their high activity indicates that the methane has not just recently begun effervescing.”
Colleagues from Bremen, Switzerland, Great Britain and Norway worked alongside marine scientists from GEOMAR and from the Cluster of Excellence “The Future Ocean”. “The study of the gas outlets in the Norwegian Sea is a good example for combined European research” stressed Professor Berndt. Hence German scientists recovered an ocean floor observatory, installed by the British research vessel James Clark Ross a year ago during a joint expedition of the National Oceanography Centre Southampton and the Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (Ifremer). “Understanding the ocean as a system is a challenge that only works in international co-operations” emphasized Berndt. The analysis of the gathered data will also be carried out internationally.
The expedition at a glance:
FS MARIA S. MERIAN journey: MSM21/4
Head of Expedition: Prof. Dr. Christian Berndt (GEOMAR)
Length of Expedition: 13th Aug. 2012-11th Sept. 2012
Place of Departure: Reykjavik
Research Area: West of Spitsbergen
Place of Arrival: Emden
Further Information on the GEOMAR expedition page
New word (for me) dept:
> with the help of JAGO, discovered typical biocoenoses that we recognised from other, older methane outlets”
Hmm. sounds like a biome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocoenosis says
Hmm, from fuzzy high school recollection and decades of use, an ecosystem can be large enough to contain multiple types of biomes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome says
Never heard of biotope either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotope says
Okay, so we could describe a methane hydrate biome as an area with CH4 release and bacteria soak it up. Then perhaps a particular patch of that biome would be a biocenose. And if the alarm bells are ringing and people rushing around to fix or offset the damage, it’s a biotope.
CH4 as a much ballyhooed “powerful greenhouse gas” that has no prominent place in the IR spectrum to brag about:
http://globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1103-post-10140.html#pid10140
LOL
LazyTeenager – original (and current as far as I know) forecasts were that the amplification was due to increased H2O vapor and certain types of clouds (also made of H2O) that trap heat and that these were positive feedbacks.
Now you are telling us that the amount of H2O in the air will go down as temperatures go up? Actually I think that is a point skeptics make to show the amplification is less than predicted. You really are a lazy teenager, aren’t you?
Samurai – all transmission of light is logarithmic, not just for CO2.
Lazy – forgot one point. Water condenses at night you say. Samurai’s point was that water is at high conc. in the air, during the DAY, when the sun is shining, which is when/where the IR absorbance takes place. Do you think the sun shines at night and the water condensation would affect IR absorbance at night?
I’ve heard Ben Santer say that there is still room for absorbance in the side bands or wavelengths near lambda max. so that the additional CO2 will still have its full effect so I will trust that this is largely true, but that says nothing about feedbacks.
I was very interested to read in several of Hansen’s papers that for some UNKNOWN reason the rate of CH4 increase in the atmosphere took a dive and became much flatter (in the 80’s and since I believe).
Could be some unknown natural process using it up, or less being produced naturally, or something due to man that we don’t know about/understand yet (less produced or more used up) OR it could be a change in the way it is measured (if so I think Hansen would have mentioned it) now as opposed to the 50’s. Either way, with just this single simple measurement there is something completely unknown going on [or not going on 🙂 ]. Just serves to highlight was a complex, uncertainty riddled science with which we are dealing.
These rogues can forget about future research funding. Were they born yesterday? This is NOT the stuff of news headlines and grand money!
Sounds like Matt Ridley needs to update Acapolypse Not to include this latest failed prediction.
Actually what we need is a whole page full of “countup” clocks — one for each disaster that was predicted and didn’t happen. How long has it been since we were all supposed to starve in the 70’s, or be wearing gas masks, or die of AIDS? So many dire predictions, and yet we’re all still here.
It’s like that line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Yup.
Re: Claude Harvey
Make that “grant”” money.
phosphine [PH3] and diphosphane [P2H4] I believe self combust when exposed to oxygen and are abundant along with methane in many boggy, marsh areas etc etc. So this is one vehicle whereby methane in small concentrations will ignite I assume….. I am not an expert, far from it in this field so I am sure someone will(may) correct me if I have made an elementary error on this one !
There are natural gas seeps all over the world. One in Muktinath, Nepal is sacred to the Buddist.
Instead of panicking over this, why didn’t somebody try to harvest it as a clean energy source?
Methane is seeping through vents all over the ocean floor, feeding the microbial base of the food chain. Somewhere in Thomas Gold’s book “The Deep Hot Biosphere” it is mentioned that methane seepage on land is also enormous, that seepage rates through the ground have been measured near gas deposits and it was calculated the rate of seepage would have emptied those deposits in a small fraction of the time they are supposed to have been there. A lot of the methane coming up from the deep gets oxidized to CO2 and water before it reaches the surface, and the methane that does make it to the atmosphere is fairly quickly oxidized in the same way.
Beautiful pictures of ocean floor seepage and comments here: living-petrol.blogspot.ca
Hydrocarbons in the deep Earth? (Carnegie Institution experiment)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/ci-hit072409.php
A theory that refuses to die – abiotic oil and gas
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/400230-vinod-dar/47079-abiotic-oil-and-gas-a-theory-that-refuses-to-vanish
Thomas Gold’s Deep Hot Biosphere and the Deep-Earth theories of the Origin of Petroleum
http://metaresearch.org/publications/bulletin/2007issues/0915/Mrb07cp5.asp
Freeman Dyson on Thomas Gold
http://demeuph.tumblr.com/post/4894090744/freeman-dyson-on-tommy-gold
The evolution of multicomponent systems at high pressures: VI. The thermodynamic stability of the hydrogen–carbon system: The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum
J. F. Kenney†‡§, Vladimir A. Kutcherov, Nikolai A. Bendeliani∥, and Vladimir A. Alekseev∥
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.long
[…]
The spontaneous genesis of hydrocarbons that comprise natural petroleum have been analyzed by chemical thermodynamic-stability theory. The constraints imposed on chemical evolution by the second law of thermodynamics are briefly reviewed, and the effective prohibition of transformation, in the regime of temperatures and pressures characteristic of the near-surface crust of the Earth, of biological molecules into hydrocarbon molecules heavier than methane is recognized.
[…]
Conclusion:
[…]
The H–C system does not spontaneously evolve heavy hydrocarbons at pressures less than ≈30 kbar, even in the most favorable thermodynamic environment. The H–C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
The link I’ve just sent with pictures of life feeding on methane vents seems messed up. Here it is again:
http://tinyurl.com/9h7hdx6
“One in Muktinath, Nepal is sacred to the Buddist.”
It’s thought by some that the Oracle at Delphi sat over another. Apparently even the ancients knew about “huffing”.
Lazyteen says the atmosphere gets colder at height. This armchair weather nut knows that is a load of horse apples. How lazy can you get? It took me three mouse clicks to find:
Temperatures decrease with altitude in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, from an average of about 20° C to below -50° C. In the next layer, the stratosphere, temperatures warm only slightly up to the ozone layer at the top of the stratosphere, where they increase rapidly with altitude until becoming about the same as on the earth’s surface. Temperatures in the next layer, the mesosphere, cool rapidly with altitude to below -80° C. Temperatures rise rapidly with increases in altitude in the next layer, the thermosphere, but temperatures there can vary widely. Depending on the activity of ionized particles within this region, they reach a high of over 1,200° C in the daytime and become extremely cold at night. The next layer is the exosphere, which cools with altitude to where it ends about 1,000 km above the earth’s surface.
There is something called the Louisiana Sinkhole that has been on the news lately
http://tinyurl.com/9retmq6
And there is this place in Turkmenistan, a big sinkhole that seems to have been burning nonstop since 1971. The locals call it The Gate to Hell.
Bill says: “all light transmission is logarithmic.”
Yes, but for CO2, any additional atmospheric CO2 concentration past 540ppm contributes very little to the overall CO2 GHE.
Yet another “face palm” for the “We must act now” bunch??
Furthermore, the Priests of Leviathan have been allowed to measure methane and temperature-related isotopes in several of those wonderful ice-cores: Temperature leads methane, with no indication of positive feedback at any stage of the glacial cycle. No wonder the Priests have not been allowed to interpret the results quantitatively.
michaeljmcfadden says:
September 25, 2012 at 2:28 am
Pretty amazing these bacterial fellas. We have an oil spill in the Gulf and they multiply like mad to eat up the oil,
=============
Just about everyone that has owned a diesel learns this. Unless you treat the fuel with some methyl or similar, bacteria from contaminated fuel will grow on the layer between the fuel and the water that accumulates at the bottom of the tanks. It turns the diesel into a black green goo that clogs all your filters and stops the engine. Jet fuel reportedly has a similar problem.
Life exists just about everywhere there is an energy source. Over time nature learns how to take advantage of the energy source. The end product of this process is waste, which in turn another form of life will evolve to consume. Carbon based energy sources produce CO2 and H2O as waste, which plants have evolved to consume as their food.
There is only one sure way to eliminate waste. Eliminate life. Because every living thing produces waste. Even plants, which produce oxygen as waste, which is highly corrosive and deadly to life without specialized, evolved structures to deal with it. It is this oxygen that is responsible for forest fires, because without this waste product from plants, there would be no forest fires. Not one.
Bill says:
September 25, 2012 at 5:39 am
I was very interested to read in several of Hansen’s papers that for some UNKNOWN reason the rate of CH4 increase in the atmosphere took a dive
=========
start measuring temperature in the morning and by noon you will be convinced the world is headed for a fiery end. but by morning you will be convinced the world is headed for an ice age. by noon, you will be again be convinced the earth is doomed to the fires of hell.
@sleepalot, I had thought that people with no technical qualifications and no experience in chemistry and chemical processes (which includes combustion) would not comment and expose their lack of knowledge. That fact that the level in the atmosphere has been fairly constant at about 1.7ppm since about 2000 is an indicator that it does not oxidise by contact with oxygen. Otherwise given that the atmosphere has roughly 20.9% oxygen there would then be no methane. Also, it was possible to measure the increase from around 1985 (about 1.58ppm) to around 2000 (about 1.72pmm) and to identify that as leakage from pipelines in Russia and East bloc countries. With tightening of supply to Europe and higher prices the Russians have largely fixed the leakage and that is why the level has been relatively constant. Maybe with the upsurge in shale gas in USA and other countries the level will rise again.The only oxidation of CH4 which you will see in my post comes from the occasional reaction with ozone. The -OH radical has been detected in the atmosphere. The methanol formed is very soluble in water (rain & clouds) and of course the sea but the quantities are too small to be measured.
As will see in my post and the note from Sunsettommy above, methane is an insignificant absorber of IR and together with its insignificant presence (1.7ppm) it has zero affect on anything.
Note to the youngsters:
You know that ancient heirloom top-loading “clathrate gun” that’s been laying around for centuries, that you were warned was put away loaded and could possible explode and kill everyone if the trigger was bumped? Turns out it’s only a cap gun, and somewhat common. Feel free to play with it if you want.
As I have said many times, but apparently not often enough, they take natural events and present them as unnatural so they have an unending supply.
http://drtimball.com/
They are then amplified into hysteria by the media, the gossipmongers in the global village.
The public is unlikely to learn everything about the way the earth works so we have to continue to educate them to the game being played. The methane issue is just one more example.
They seem close to that point as the polls show. The Pew centre poll shows environment and global warming very low and declining faster than all issues except illegal immigration.
http://www.people-press.org/2012/01/23/public-priorities-deficit-rising-terrorism-slipping/
It has something to do with the economy, but mostly because it forces people to examine and rethink priorities. It allows them and politicians to offset the environmentalists claims to moral high ground and the pressure of ‘shouldn’t we act anyway’ of the precautionary principle.
Of course, there is also the more traditional sequence laid out by Aesop and his fable about the boy who cried wolf. The modern equivalent is Chicken Little crying wolf.
Robin Barry says:
September 25, 2012 at 1:08 am
I can never get too worked up about methane. In an oxygen rich atmosphere and plenty of heat sources (lightning, fires etc.) it will burn into CO2 and water soon enough.
Oh no not dreaded CO2!