Guest Post by David Middleton
The Arctic methane time bomb keeps ticking… From Scientific American…
Climatewire
More Arctic Methane Bubbles into Atmosphere
A new study suggests more than twice as much of the potent greenhouse gas is bubbling out of the rapidly warming Arctic Ocean, speeding climate change
By Stephanie Paige Ogburn and ClimateWire
Arctic Ocean: A new study reports that methane releases from one part of the Arctic Ocean are more than twice what scientists previously thought.
[…]
If the Arctic Methane Time Bomb is really twice as bad as “scientists previously thought,” one of two things must be happening:
- The Arctic methane time bomb is about to go off and turn Earth into Venus.
- “Scientists” preconceptions about the climatic hazards of Arctic methane are very wrong.
Arctic methane is currently trapped in permafrost and in methane hydrate deposits. Some methane from these traps escapes to the atmosphere every year, particularly during warm summer months. However, there is absolutely no indication that this represents some sort of Arctic methane time bomb, ticking its way to some sort of carbon Apocalypse.
Permafrost
Permafrost is ground that is frozen below the active layer (~30-100 mm) for multi-year periods. Some Arctic permafrost has been frozen for at least several thousand years. The active layer may thaw seasonally; however the permafrost substrate remains frozen year-round. The frozen nature of the soil below the active layer prevents it from adequately draining. This results in a very boggy active layer with abundant decaying plant matter. As such, permafrost is generally very methane-rich.
A rapid and extensive thawing of Arctic permafrost could theoretically release a lot of methane into the atmosphere. There’s just very little reason to think that this is even a remote possibility now or in the foreseeable future.
News in Brief: Warming may not release Arctic carbon
Element could stay locked in soil, 20-year study suggests
By Erin Wayman
Web edition: May 15, 2013
Print edition: June 15, 2013; Vol.183 #12 (p. 13)
Researchers used greenhouses to artificially warm tundra (shown, in autumn) for 20 years. They found no net change in the amount of carbon stored in the soil.
Sadie Iverson
The Arctic’s stockpile of carbon may be more secure than scientists thought. In a 20-year experiment that warmed patches of chilly ground, tundra soil kept its stored carbon, researchers report.
[…]
In the Alaska experiment, they warmed the permafrost by 2°C over a 20-yr period (10 times the actual rate of warming since the 1800s) and there wasn’t the slightest hint of an accelerated methane release.
There is no evidence of widespread thawing of Arctic permafrost since Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS-11), approximately 450,000 years ago. None of the subsequent interglacial stages indicate widespread permafrost thawing, above 60°N, not even MIS-5 (Eemian/Sangamonian), which was about 2°C warmer than present day, possibly as much as 5°C warmer in the Arctic.
The last interglacial stage (MIS-5, Sangamonian/Eemian) was considerably warmer than the current interglacial and sea level was 3-6 meters higher than modern times. It was particularly warmer in the Arctic. Oxygen isotope ratios from the NGRIP ice core indicate that the Arctic was approximately 5°C warmer at the peak of MIS-5 (~135,000 years ago).
It also appears that it was significantly warmer in the Arctic during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (~7,000 years ago) than modern times. The Arctic was routinely ice-free during summer for most of the Holocene up until about 1,000 years ago. McKay et al., 2008 demonstrated that the modern Arctic sea ice cover is anomalously high and the Arctic summer sea surface temperature is anomalously low relative to the rest of the Holocene…
Modern sea-ice cover in the study area, expressed here as the number of months/year with >50% coverage, averages 10.6 ±1.2 months/year… Present day SST and SSS in August are 1.1 ± 2.4 8C and 28.5 ±1.3, respectively… In the Holocene record of core HLY0501-05, sea-ice cover has ranged between 5.5 and 9 months/year, summer SSS has varied between 22 and 30, and summer SST has ranged from 3 to 7.5 8C (Fig. 7).
McKay et al., 2008
Vaks et al., 2013 found no evidence of widespread permafrost thawing above 60°N since MIS-11, not even during MIS-5…
The absence of any observed speleothem growth since MIS 11 in the northerly Lenskaya Ledyanaya cave (despite dating outer edges of 7 speleothems), suggests the permanent presence of permafrost at this latitude since the end of MIS-11. Speleothem growth in this cave occurred in early MIS-11, ruling out the possibility that the unusual length of MIS-11 caused the permafrost thawing.
[…]
The degradation of permafrost at 60°N during MIS-11 allows an assessment of the warming required globally to cause such extensive change in the permafrost boundary.
[…]
There is clear evidence that the Arctic was at least 5°C warmer during MIS-11 than it is today…
Several so-called “superinterglacials” have been identified in the Quaternary sediment record from LakeEl’gygytgyn (Melles et al.,2012). Among these “superinterglacials”, marine isotope stage (MIS) 11c and 31 appear to be the most outstanding in terms of their temperature, vegetation cover, in-lake productivity, and in the case of MIS11c also duration (Melles et al.,2012). Quantitative climate reconstructions for MIS11c and 31 at Lake El’gygytgyn imply that temperatures and annual precipitation values were up to ca. 5°C and ca. 300mm higher if compared to the Holocene (Melles et al.,2012)
The best geological evidence for the Arctic methane time bomb being a dud can be found in the stratigraphy beneath Lake El’gygytgyn in northeastern Russia. The lake and its mini-basin occupy a 3.58 million year old meteor crater. Its sediments are ideally suited for a continuous high-resolution climate reconstruction from the Holocene all the way back to the mid-Pliocene. Unlike most other Arctic lakes, Lake El’gygytgyn, has never been buried by glacial stage continental ice sheets. Melles et al., 2012 utilized sediment cores from Lake El’gygytgyn to build a 2.8 million year climate reconstruction of northeastern Russia…
The data from Melles et al., 2012 are available from NOAA’s paleoclimatology library. And it is clearly obvious that Arctic summers were much warmer than either the Eemian/Sangamonian (MIS-5e) and the Holocene (MIS-1)…
MIS-11 peaked a full 5°C warmer than the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which was 1-2°C warmer than the present.
Referring back to Vaks et al., 2013, we can see that there is no evidence of widespread permafrost melting above 60°N since the beginning of MIS-11…
Since we know that the Arctic was about 5°C warmer during the Eemian/Sangamonian (MIS-5e) than it currently is and that there is no evidence of widespread permafrost melt above 60°N, it’s a pretty good bet that the MIS-11 Arctic was 6-10°C warmer than the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
The lack of evidence of permafrost melt during MIS-5 tends to indicate that MIS-11 may have been more than 5°C warmer. So, the notion that we are on the verge of a permafrost meltdown is patently absurd.
Methane Hydrate Deposits
Methane hydrates (or gas hydrate) are composed of molecules of methane encased in a lattice of ice crystals. These accumulations are fairly common in marine sediments.
Gas hydrate is an ice like substance formed when methane or some other gases combine with water at appropriate pressure and temperature conditions. Gas hydrates sequester large amounts of methane and are widespread in marine sediments and sediments of permafrost areas.
99% of methane hydrate deposits are thought to be in deepwater environments. The only way that climate change could destabilize these deposits would be through a sudden drop in sea level. The thermocline of the deepwater deposits changes very little (not at all at depth) even with 20 °C of surface warming over a 1,000-yr period.
Methane Hydrates and Contemporary Climate Change
By: Carolyn D. Ruppel (U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole, MA) © 2011 Nature Education
Citation: Ruppel, C. D. (2011) Methane Hydrates and Contemporary Climate Change. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):29
Methane Hydrate Primer
Methane hydrate is an ice-like substance formed when CH4 and water combine at low temperature (up to ~25ºC) and moderate pressure (greater than 3-5 MPa, which corresponds to combined water and sediment depths of 300 to 500 m). Globally, an estimated 99% of gas hydrates occurs in the sediments of marine continental margins at saturations as high as 20% to 80% in some lithologies; the remaining 1% is mostly associated with sediments in and beneath areas of high-latitude, continuous permafrost (McIver 1981, Collett et al. 2009). Nominally, methane hydrate concentrates CH4 by ~164 times on a volumetric basis compared to gas at standard pressure and temperature. Warming a small volume of gas hydrate could thus liberate large volumes of gas.
A challenge for assessing the impact of contemporary climate change on methane hydrates is continued uncertainty about the size of the global gas hydrate inventory and the portion of the inventory that is susceptible to climate warming. This paper addresses the latter issue, while the former remains under active debate.
[…]
Fate of Contemporary Methane Hydrates During Warming Climate
The susceptibility of gas hydrates to warming climate depends on the duration of the warming event, their depth beneath the seafloor or tundra surface, and the amount of warming required to heat sediments to the point of dissociating gas hydrates. A rudimentary estimate of the depth to which sediments are affected by an instantaneous, sustained temperature change DT in the overlying air or ocean waters can be made using the diffusive length scale 1 = √kt , which describes the depth (m) that 0.5 DT will propagate in elapsed time t (s). k denotes thermal diffusivity, which ranges from ~0.6 to 1×10-6 m2/s for unconsolidated sediments. Over 10, 100, and 1000 yr, the calculation yields maximum of 18 m, 56 m, and 178 m, respectively, regardless of the magnitude of DT. In real situations, DT is usually small and may have short- (e.g., seasonal) or long-term fluctuations that swamp the signal associated with climate warming trends. Even over 103 yr, only gas hydrates close to the seafloor and initially within a few degrees of the thermodynamic stability boundary might experience dissociation in response to reasonable rates of warming. As discussed below, less than 5% of the gas hydrate inventory may meet these criteria.
Even when gas hydrate dissociates, several factors mitigate the impact of the liberated CH4 on the sediment-ocean-atmosphere system. In marine sediments, the released CH4 may dissolve in local pore waters, remain trapped as gas, or rise toward the seafloor as bubbles. Up to 90% or more of the CH4 that reaches the sulfate reduction zone (SRZ) in the near-seafloor sediments may be consumed by anaerobic CH4 oxidation (Hinrichs & Boetius 2002, Treude et al. 2003, Reeburgh 2007, Knittel & Boetius 2009). At the highest flux sites (seeps), the SRZ may vanish, allowing CH4 to be injected directly into the water column or, in some cases, partially consumed by aerobic microbes (Niemann et al. 2006).
Methane emitted at the seafloor only rarely survives the trip through the water column to reach the atmosphere.
[…]
Global Warming and Gas Hydrate Type Locales
Methane hydrates occur in five geographic settings (or sectors) that must be individually evaluated to determine their susceptibility to warming climate (Figure 1). The percentages assigned to each sector below assume that 99% of global gas hydrate is within the deepwater marine realm (McIver 1981, Collett et al. 2009). Future refinements of the global ratio of marine to permafrost-associated gas hydrates will require adjustment of the assigned percentages. Owing to the orders of magnitude uncertainty in the estimated volume of CH4 trapped in global gas hydrate deposits, the percentages below have not been converted to Gt C.
[…]
Conclusions
Catastrophic, widespread dissociation of methane gas hydrates will not be triggered by continued climate warming at contemporary rates (0.2ºC per decade; IPCC 2007) over timescales of a few hundred years. Most of Earth’s gas hydrates occur at low saturations and in sediments at such great depths below the seafloor or onshore permafrost that they will barely be affected by warming over even 103 yr. Even when CH4 is liberated from gas hydrates, oxidative and physical processes may greatly reduce the amount that reaches the atmosphere as CH4. The CO2 produced by oxidation of CH4 released from dissociating gas hydrates will likely have a greater impact on the Earth system (e.g., on ocean chemistry and atmospheric CO2 concentrations; Archer et al. 2009) than will the CH4 that remains after passing through various sinks.
Contemporary and future gas hydrate degradation will occur primarily on the circum-Arctic Ocean continental shelves (Sector 2; Macdonald 1990, Lachenbruch et al. 1994, Maslin 2010), where subsea permafrost thawing and methane hydrate dissociation have been triggered by warming and inundation since Late Pleistocene time, and at the feather edge of the GHSZ on upper continental slopes (Sector 3), where the zone’s full thickness can dissociate rapidly due to modest warming of intermediate waters. More CH4 may be sequestered in upper continental slope gas hydrates than in those associated with subsea permafrost; however, CH4 that reaches the seafloor from dissociating Arctic Ocean shelf gas hydrates is much more likely to enter the atmosphere rapidly and as CH4, not CO2. Proof is still lacking that gas hydrate dissociation currently contributes to seepage from upper continental slopes or to elevated seawater CH4 concentrations on circum-Arctic Ocean shelves. An even greater challenge for the future is determining the contribution of global gas hydrate dissociation to contemporary and future atmospheric CH4 concentrations.
[…]
The infamous photos, often posted by alarmists, of methane bubbling up from the Arctic sea floor and lake beds account for less than 1% of global methane hydrate deposits. These deposits are unstable in any temperature regime at depths of less than 200 m. They were already bubbling long before Al Gore invented CAGW.
Arctic Methane Time Bomb Defused
A substantial permafrost thaw above 60° N would require the Arctic to warm by more than 5°C relative to current conditions
A substantial destabilization of methane hydrate deposits is highly unlikely even with 20°C of warming relative to current conditions.
Arctic methane time bomb defused… QED.
References
McKay, J. L.; de Vernal, A.; Hillaire-Marcel, C.; Not, C.; Polyak, L.; Darby, D. (2008) Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Volume 45, Number 11, 2008 , pp. 1377-1397(21)
Miller, K.G., et al. (2005) The Phanerozoic Record of Global Sea-Level Change. Science. Vol. 310 no. 5752 pp. 1293-1298 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116412
Melles, M., J. Brigham-Grette, P.S. Minyuk, N.R. Nowaczyk, V. Wennrich (2012) 2.8 Million Years of Arctic Climate Change from Lake El’gygytgyn, NE Russia. Science. Vol. 337 no. 6092 pp. 315-320. DOI: 10.1126/science.1222135
Ruppel, C. D. (2011) Methane Hydrates and Contemporary Climate Change. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):29
Vaks, A., et al. (2013) Speleothems Reveal 500,000-Year History of Siberian Permafrost. Science. Vol. 340 no. 6129 pp. 183-186. DOI: 10.1126/science.1228729
Vogel, H., Meyer-Jacob, C., Melles, M., Brigham-Grette, J., Andreev, A. A., Wennrich, V., Tarasov, P. E., and Rosén, P.: Detailed insight into Arctic climatic variability during MIS 11c at Lake El’gygytgyn, NE Russia, Clim. Past, 9, 1467-1479, doi:10.5194/cp-9-1467-2013, 2013.
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MarkW says:
December 13, 2013 at 2:02 pm
“If the permafrost truely is melting, where did all of that methane go. It didn’t make it to the atmosphere. Methane concentrations have been pretty much constant for more than a decade.”
Methane plus oxygen plus source of ignition = carbon dioxide plus water. Lightning strikes are a massive source of ignition. No, the amount of methane is so low that the flame cannot continue, but every strike removes some methane. And it is also removed by bushfires, cars, aircraft, railway engines, trucks, ships – anything that takes in air and heats it up so the methane is burnt.
If these sources did not remove the methane, one would think that the atmosphere would be full of methane now.
Do they think we live in the first ice age the earth has endured? The Carboniferous/Permian glaciation surely produced bountiful methane hydrates. Why would their release a quarter of a billion years ago when the planet recovered not have boiled the oceans then?
McIntyre has too much integrity for such behavior and yet has a real B.S. in Mathematics, unlike Mosher’s B.A. in English and Philosophy.
No “Bomb.”
No Nothing!
No funding!
“The Arctic methane time bomb is about to go off and turn Earth into Venus.”
Here are Lady Gaga’s thoughts on the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqGUazdA3yE
Can anyone tell me the budget available to prove that the methane sources below the ice are not the cause of the local not global warming of that area? Since they are now saying that the lack of global warming is because it is all concentrated in that sub Arctic area surely the most basic check is that it did not originate there.
The NASA sea anomaly has always indicated the existence of sudden random hot flushes in that area totally at odds with any global source of low temperature widespread source.
It is time climate scientists got off their well padded complacent rear ends and looked at the world itself not at the computer screens. More so since they have not even a kindergarten level as to creating a computer model properly from the publicly available examples in the UK.
“We really need to get rid of the Eemian”.
Thanks again David. I always enjoy your demolition jobs, reading the cited papers and wondering when the very few members of the cause can get around to ‘debunking’ them all 😉
Funny how geologists are not the ‘go to’ guys when it comes to climate. No wonder the clowns spend so long attacking them.
There should be a pattern clear to all that studies which use the term “worse than predicted” or “more than previously thought” are basically phony studies, when related to climate or any other topic dominated by the so-called progressives.
The real “time-bomb”, and what scares the bejesus out of these “scientists” is the soon-to-come (probably within 5 years) doom for their cherished Alarmist industry. When the quackscience blows up in the quackscientists’ faces, there will be much sound and fury, furious backpedaling and finger-pointing, but ultimately many reputations and careers destroyed. It will be a travesty.
“Arctic permafrost”. The Arctic is mostly water after all.
Methane emitted at the seafloor only rarely survives the trip through the water column to reach the atmosphere.
============
bacteria and algae have regulated earth’s climate for the past 2 billion years. it is the ignorance and arrogance of humans that leads them to believe they are driving climate.
methane is produced continually within the earth as a result of plate tectonics. limestone (fossilized CO2) and water are carried from the oceans into the earth, heated under pressure and reduced in the presence of iron from earth’s core to form hydrocarbons.
The basic chemistry behind this is that steam and iron when combined produce hydrogen, as the iron captures the oxygen but not the hydrogen. A similar process happens with limestone and iron when heated. the oxygen is captured by the iron, the carbon is released to combine with the hydrogen from the steam, and the calcium is released back into solution. Which explains why the oceans and life itself are rich in calcium.
The hydrocarbons, being lighter than water, percolate upwards towards the surface. bacteria consume these hydrocarbons, releasing CO2 which is captured by the oceans to produce limestone, completing the cycle.
bacteria have been using methane long before humans learned to do so. humans, by burning methane for energy are simply recycling in a fashion similar to bacteria.
Tim Cullen has a a very interesting series of posts on the properties of Methane here.
http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/methane-myopia-1-political-science/
http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/methane-myopia-2-energy-science/
http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/methane-myopia-3-earth-science/
http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/methane-myopia-4-pobiti-kamani/
http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/methane-myopia-5-ice-core-science/
http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/methane-myopia-6-space-science/
His site is one of the most interesting for Real Science on the web, the old science that has been forgotten, misquoted/altered or is currently being ignored is brought to light in very interesting posts.
Poptech says:
December 13, 2013 at 8:11 pm
unlike Mosher’s B.A. in English and Philosophy.
==============
He’s overqualified for climate science.
Either :
1) all that methane bled off during the Holcene period and someone put it all back, or
2) it didnt bleed off during the holcene period which means it likely wont bleed off this time.
Most of the Arctic land mass is Russian. I wonder what their scientists have to say about methane release through permafrost loss?
Back in the 1990s we were tasked with the job of re-surveying older drill holes at the Voiseys Bay exploration project (latitude 56 deg 20 min). Even in mid July many of the drill holes were frozen shut (permafrost). Problem was there was no rhyme or reason which holes were shut and which were open. Some we never did open up – too much ice. Others were frozen only for a few meters. Others still were open at surface and frozen deeper down.
Then there were the ponds, covered with four feet of ice in the winter. I always wondered if there was permafrost under those lakes. Because northern Canada is FULL of fresh water lakes.
My conclusion? Permafrost is not so simple.
joe says:
December 14, 2013 at 8:04 am
————————————————–
3) or whatever methane was there bled off during the Holocene and nothing bad happened.
This reminds me of the nincompoopery following the September 2001 moratorium on commercial air travel that suggested that contrails masked the true extent of the AGW nightmare. As “proof” of the theory the authors (nincompoops) cited several surface temperature spikes (cherry picked of course) during the less than 72 hour period.
It also frightens me about as much.
“The only way that climate change could destabilize these deposits would be through a sudden drop in sea level.” The last time that happened was during the last ice age. Was the greenhouse effect due to the release of methane deposits a contributing factor in the global warming that brought us out of the ice age?
Re: Fred Berple “methane cycle”
What a fascinating and great explanation!
Aside: I find your insights and opinions to be among the most informative and interesting on the site. I look forward to reading them. Thanks.
Re the Cullen blog: Google (or DuckDuckgo) “Pobiti Kamani”, aka Earth’s natural natural gas pipelines.
Thanks David for an really concise explanation of the subject. One thing I also noticed in your report was that the Arctic ocean was ice free a lot from about a 1000 to 7000 years ago, why that is of interest is that was also a period that number of cultures did explorations that have been prevented since then until just recently ( and probably will be halted again in the near future I don’t believe that we have the tech. to exploit up there jet on a long term profitable basis anyway). Tobias
In a way that is sad but maybe the oil and mining industries will leave it alone long enough so the polar bears can return (sarc off)
David Middleton says:
December 13, 2013 at 2:12 pm
It’s called “humor.” Sarcasm is another one of my hobbies. I thought it was sufficiently obvious that I didn’t need to use /sarc.
Excellent! It’s a long time since I read a post at WUWT that made me laugh as hard as this one did!
Congratulations.
If ‘more than twice as much of the potent greenhouse gas [methane] is bubbling out of the rapidly warming Arctic Ocean‘ as ‘scientists previously thought‘, then they must have wildly overestimated somewhere else. See AR5 Figure 1.7 – measured methane concentration is running below every single IPCC prediction (FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4).
Dudley Horscroft says:
December 13, 2013 at 7:42 pm
“Methane plus oxygen plus source of ignition = carbon dioxide plus water. Lightning strikes are a massive source of ignition. No, the amount of methane is so low that the flame cannot continue, but every strike removes some methane. And it is also removed by bushfires, cars, aircraft, railway engines, trucks, ships – anything that takes in air and heats it up so the methane is burnt.”
Shouldn’t most of it be oxidized near the surface by Ozone or undergo reactions with natural volatile organic compounds, often with the help of UV photons? UV splits VOC’s into radicals, radicals react with something that wants to, or somesuch. VOC’s are emitted by plant stomata I read in the wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound