That 'Methane Time Bomb' now lurks behind dams

What, is the methane from organic matter in sediments NOT released if not impounded by a dam?

Igor Semiletov has responded to Gavin here:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2017089/arctic_methane_catastrophe_scenario_is_based_on_new_empirical_observations.html
in it he says, “Yet in my interview with Prof Peter Wadhams, co-author of the Nature study and head of Polar ocean physics at Cambridge University, he told me that the scientists who rejected his scenario as implausible were simply unacquainted with the unique dynamics of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, the nature of permafrost melting there, and its relationship to ongoing releases of methane in recent years which have been wholly unexpected within established models based on reconstructions of Earth’s historical climate:
“Those who understand Arctic seabed geology and the oceanography of water column warming from ice retreat do not say that this is a low probability event. I think one should trust those who know about a subject rather than those who don’t. As far as I’m concerned, the experts in this area are the people who have been actively working on the seabed conditions in the East Siberian Sea in summer during the past few summers where the ice cover has disappeared and the water has warmed. The rapid disappearance of offshore permafrost through water heating is a unique phenomenon, so clearly no ‘expert’ would have found a mechanism elsewhere to compare with this… I think that most Arctic specialists would agree that this scenario is plausible.”
————–
in your article you mention the mighty Mississippi.
The Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf has 3 main rivers, all feeding sediments that are riche in permafrost laden with trapped carbon, deposited into the ESAS under the ice and kept at or very close to freezing.
The sediment layer, put in place since the glaciers melted at the beginning of the Holocene is now over 150 feet deep, full of methane and warming from exposure to sunlight and a warming ocean current.
At this point it should be stated that, even if the probability is low, this is a clear and present danger.

Dammed Methane!

Wouldn’t releasing water from the bottom of the dam flush this out? The dam at the west end of Lake Powell does a sediment flush annually. Another moot ‘clear and present danger’?

Anytime you take a fast-moving water source and replace a section of it with a slow moving reservoir, you will get a local increase in methane production. The organic material in the sediment will break down differently depending on the quantity of oxygen available, and in low-oxygen environments (such as, at the bottom of a reservoir), it will anaerobically produce methane. This is well established.
However, what matters on this study is whether the insertion of a dam, which stops the flow of sediment down the river, creates a local increase that is greater than the non-local decrease due to less sediment farther down the stream/river. The process of water flowing and pulling sediment with it will probably be significantly reduced with the dam, as small dams provide an effective first line of flood magnitude reduction, and floods are a major cause of river-borne sediment. On the other hand, with the shallow stream/river flowing freely, some of that organic sediment will break down aerobically and not end up as methane, reducing the amount of methane produced per unit of sediment.
Unless that trade-off is evaluated, this is a narrow slice of a complex picture, with the world being no better informed about the consequences of the small dams as a result.

It appears to me that if these reservoirs of methane are such ticking timebombs we should be mining them for the methane so we can safely contain it or use known thermal processes to convert it to a less deadly (GHG) form.

@Mike Smith
Dam right!

milodonharlani
The methane sediments began to be deposited around that time. before that the area was above water.

Methane-consuming archaebacteria in marine sediments
Large amounts of methane are produced in marine sediments but are then consumed before contacting aerobic waters or the atmosphere1.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v398/n6730/abs/398802a0.html

Methane production and consumption in anoxic marine sediments
The production of methane in anoxic environments can lead to significant accumulations of this gas in appropriate marine sediments. However, the uniformly low methane concentrations in marine, anoxic, sulfate-reducing sea water and sediments represents a balance between production by methanogenic bacteria and consumption by sulfate-reducing bacteria. The primary sink for anaerobically generated methane in marine sediments is sulfate reduction, not aerobic oxidation.
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/4/5/297.abstract

So, was the Medieval Warm Period caused by the increased number of monasteries in Europe, each of which built dams to create their fishponds? That would mean that the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries caused the Little Ice Age.
Where do I apply for my research grant?

To produce methane with a microbe, you need either FERMENTATION or a supply of HYDROGEN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen
That’s why most methane on Earth–contrary to the fossil dogma–must be GEO-LOGICAL, not BIO-LOGICAL.

before the area was inundated with water it was frozen solid up to and most likely sometime after the beginning of the Holocene, only after that was permafrost eroded away into the river deltas below the permanent sea ice, and this process continued through the last 10,000 years.
Gary Pearse,
Thank you for your kind words. However, I am not hear to exchange compliments.
I am here to share with you something that should be inherently obvious.
You say that Gavin was praised here because he wasn’t ready to accept the possibility that something “preposterous” could happen.
1. In that single statement is the crux of your challenged position in this field of science.
a) That Gavin wasn’t ready to accept the possibility that something “preposterous” could happen, when he actually only stated that it was highly unlikely.
and
b) That anyone here can possibly determine that the release of methane from the ESAS sedimentary layers after being covered with sea ice in a below freezing environment for thousands of years CANNOT POSSIBLY HAPPEN, even though the 3 main scientists in the world who actually spend their summers AND winters up there for the last decade CAN’T POSSIBLY TELL US THAT IT IS A POSSIBILITY.
This indicates an anti-science basis for a belief that is either based in not knowing the science or not caring about the science.
Face it Gary, the vast amount of opposition to the concept of global warming is based on an irrational fear that those who promote the science of global warming are actually promoting socialism and wealth redistribution which must be fought at any price, regardless of the actual science.
in other words, this isn’t a scientific argument it is an ideological one. With an almost pathological disregard for the consequences.
or, in other words, if you or I or anyone else was speaking at the Heartland conference and asked the audience,
“If global warming actually WAS happening and the ONLY solution was a communal effort similar to a WWII wartime mobilization with appropriated/contracted production combined with increased tax rates and windfall profit taxes, would you be opposed to those actions even if not doing them meant that future generations of Americans would suffer and die?”
upon asking that question, how many honest answers do you suppose would be “Yes, I would want those actions to happen, if Global warming was real”?

Mike Smith
You’re welcome.
The current temperatures are far higher than the MWA and basically tied with the Minoan Warming Period.
As far as the sea ice that was existing over the ESAS, sure, fine, show me a link to a peer reviewed study that shows that this area was ice free during this period. I’d love to see it.

oh, I see, you thought we were talking about deposits behind dams. no, we are talking about the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf and the methane rich sedimentary drape produced by the Lena, OB and other rivers in the area.

Will these guys ever stop looking for the bogey man under their beds to blame so that they can rage and take more freedoms from people..?
Most people who know about how the methane got their in the first place understand that microbes cause it and then they are followed by microbes that eat it…

freddy says: @ July 31, 2013 at 11:09 am
Does that mean I can blow up any Beaver dam I come across?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Please Please DO, I have a couple that need blowing.
What is even more amusing is the near by city has a problem with Giardiasis (beaver fever) and takes their city water just down stream from where my beaver pond water enters the river. I asked the city if they wanted to test the beaver on my land but they declined saying they already knew the beaver were infected. This of course never makes it into the news or into discussions at town hall meetings.
The blackout is so complete that a friend after months of doctor’s visits finally had to send fecal samples from her toddler to her vet to get a positive diagnosis. When the authorities found out she was threated with criminal proceedings. (The newspapers refused to print her story of course.)
Swamps and beaver are sacred of course so it won’t do to tell let the public know that a disease immune to public water treatment is carried by those cute little beavers… And you though polar bear mania was bad.
(I have well water and don’t drink city water.)

Jimbo
and yet we are basically tied with 2009 and 2010 with a very high likelihood that we will pass the 2007 minimum values, when the air has been absolutely frigid due to the collapse of the jet stream.

Beaver fever is a parasitic disease caused by the flagellate protozoan Giardia lamblia organism. Any modern day water treatment plant should be remove/kill this parasite from the water. That being said major reservoir hosts for the parasite include beavers, dogs, cats, horses, humans, cattle and birds, So maybe Beaver fever is more of a Fido fever.

jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 3:57 pm
**************************************
The current warming is the least of the five warming periods of the past 10,000 years, and all the recent warming periods have not reached the warmth of the Eemian 125,000 years ago. The first and warmest period of the Holocene, the Climactic Optimum, covered 8,000 to 5,000 years ago. The less warm Minoan followed, then the cooler Roman, then the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350 AD, and now the least warm period, the current warming, which followed the coldest period of the last 10,000 years, the Little Ice Age. The Earth has been gradually cooling since the height of the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
Since sea levels have been higher during the last 10,000 years several times, including during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, there have been ample opportunities for “catastrophic” methane releases, and none occurred. None occurred during the even warmer Eemian either. In fact, the past million years have seen 100,000 -year glacial periods alternating with 10,000-year interglacials. Warming during the interglacials never produced run-away warming, proof of which is that each was soon followed by much longer glacial periods, which began even as CO2 released from the warming oceans was at its peak.
So to recap, warming began each time when CO2 was lowest, and cooling began each time when CO2 was at its comparative highest. The complexity of natural climate change trumps the simplicity of a CO2 driven, now falsified by observations, hypothesis. Alarmists desperately need a new hypothesis, one that explains how heat allegedly “sequestered” in the ocean can be causing changes attributed to atmospheric warming during a 16-year period with no significant warming. The rumored increase in ocean temperatures cannot even be measured with precision with today’s technology, and its existence is an act of faith bordering on religious fervor to answer the question: Where’s the heat?
If it’s hiding in the oceans now, what was different during the warmer Eemian, and why did such heat give way to cold? It’s a fundamental mystery alarmists show no signs of solving.

Jai,
Here is the phase diagram showing the stability zone for methane hydrates:
youtube – Cold Seeps and Methane Hydrates
At 3:15 in the clip there is a global distribution map. Note the presence of methane ice in tropical/equatorial regions. If the tropical hydrates fail to alleviate your concerns about polar hydrate stability, watch the clip from start to finish, noting the presence of lifeforms feasting on (and in) the methane ice.
An Earth without hydrocarbon powered microbes would be very different. The atmosphere might be orange, like that of Titan, and the oceans probably couldn’t support photosynthesis:, because
“That the globe is not swamped with oil is testament to the efficiency and versatility of the networks of microorganisms that degrade hydrocarbons…”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16489346
The importance of methanotrophs is grotesquely underestimated/neglected in biology, evolution, and in climate “science.” But when ignorance is alarming…it is jolly to be wise. 🙂

majormike1 says:
July 31, 2013 at 8:07 pm
jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 3:57 pm
**************************************
The current warming is the least of the five warming periods of the past 10,000 years
Stop right there and prove that statement. I believe it to be completely false. Absolutely. show me how you think this is true and maybe we can talk.

majormike1
I will respond to the following statement:
So to recap, warming began each time when CO2 was lowest, and cooling began each time when CO2 was at its comparative highest. The complexity of natural climate change trumps the simplicity of a CO2 driven, now falsified by observations, hypothesis.
———
Yes, warming began when CO2 was lowest in the glacial cycle because the normal interglacial cycle is driven by the milankovitch solar cycle where the difference in northern hemisphere solar intensity will very rarely and very very temporarily make the northern hemisphere glacier free.
once the glaciers start to retreat the combination of decreased albedo and the release of carbon dioxide gasses produce additional warming. As the earth continues to warm additional moisture vapor (humidity) grows in the atmosphere. And the cycle continues, but always within equilibrium due to the very slow (>10,000 year) process of warming about 4 degrees C on average.
Once the solar cycle peaks, the temperature stays warm for a while, several thousand years, then once the solar cycle is very much lower than the peak and the earth starts to cool, the humidity levels drop and it cools even more, then the natural CO2 emissions are absorbed by the earth and CO2 begins to drop and finally the earth’s temperature drops quite rapidly, (but still over several thousand years).
No one ever said that previous interglacials were driven by CO2, they aren’t. They have always been described as I have just told you. In fact, we know that the amount of heat energy in the northern hemisphere simply isn’t enough to get rid of the ice ages. After all, the increased solar radiation in the northern hemisphere is balanced by a decrease in the southern hemisphere. So it is a land-based effect that produces the necessary heat required to push the earth into an interglacial.
The last time CO2 was this high there were palm trees growing at the arctic circle.

Jai,
Your first link to “Permafrost-Associated Gas Hydrate” offered no useful information in the abstract on how they might “form and function differently,” and I’m not willing to shell out $30. Are you willing to pay $40 to read about the “Discovery of Viable Methanotrophic Bacteria in Permafrost Sediments of Northeast Siberia” … ?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1016025709833
Or is the title informative enough?
Here’s another peer-reviewed paper (Marine Geology, Dec 2012) – no charge:
“Methane seeps in the ocean are much more important to life in the ocean than we previously have suspected“:
http://martinhovland.weebly.com/
There is a link to my “exciting” website at the end of the paper. 🙂

Roy Jones says:
July 31, 2013 at 12:55 pm
“So, was the Medieval Warm Period caused by the increased number of monasteries in Europe, each of which built dams to create their fishponds? That would mean that the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries caused the Little Ice Age. ”
Great idea! One problem: The protestants never destroyed the fish ponds. There are such ponds a few kilometers from where I live in Germany; it’s a beautiful recreational area these days, the ponds have always been in use since their creation 900 years or so ago.
The monastery was never dissolved by the protestants but only by Napoleon after his invasion of Germany.
Aerial sight of the ponds:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Braunschweig_Luftaufnahme_Riddagshaeuser_Seen_(2011).JPG

jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 3:42 pm
Mike Smith
You’re welcome.
The current temperatures are far higher than the MWA and basically tied with the Minoan Warming Period.

Since you like any proxy that shows warmer today here are other proxies showing a warmer MWP.

Abstract
……..SST averaged from shell time series would be weighted toward the fast-growing summer season, resulting in the conclusion that the early MCA was warmer than the late 20th century by ~ 1 °C. This conclusion is broadly true for the summer season, but not true for the winter season….
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.07.003

Further reading
Here is a review of the scientific literature says warmer MWP than today plus pdf original.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/review-finds-medieval-warm-period-was.html

Jimbo,
look at this graph that your own climate sceptic friend Roy Spencer used in his recent testimony. http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/2000-yr-temperature-variations.png
you will see that the 1998 peak in NORTHER HEMISPHERE temperatures is slightly higher than both the medieveal warm and the minoan warm period. These temperatures are northern hemisphere temperatures, not global temperautures. Globally we know that the warm pulses were regional events associated with an abnormally quiet north hemisphere volcanic activity and that the temperatures were much more moderate in the southern hemisphere during this period.
Things are actually warmer now than even the Holocene climate optimum (or at least statistically tied).
This is the most accurate representation of global temperature during the last 20,000 years, with a projection of the temperatures we currently expect to 2100 though the future projection assumes a very low emissions profile and an artificially low sensitivity. It would be more accurate to show a projected increase 3 degrees above the Hadcrut curve (red) at the end (so it should go up to 4 with uncertainty to 6).
http://klimaatverandering.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b.png