Many readers know that we’ve covered the supposed “ticking time bomb” of methane that is supposedly going to be released somewhere, somehow, either from methane clathrates on the sea floor due to ocean warming, or from melting permafrost. Due to methane having a greater GHG warming factor, a potential of 34 times that of CO2 over 100 years, there’s a perceived threat so great, that there’s a collection of scientists that have formed the Arctic Methane Emergency Group.
They made this King Canute style press release last year, where they called for a “rapid refreezing of the Arctic to halt runaway melting”, as if somehow we’ll just put a halt to those processes with a wave of the hand:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
TIME: Thursday, December 4, 2014, 12:00-12:30 PM
SUBJECT: Arctic meltdown: a catastrophic threat to our survival
AMEG calls for rapid refreezing of the Arctic to halt runaway melting
WHO: John Nissen, Chair AMEG, supported by Professor Peter Wadhams, Cambridge University, co-founder of AMEG and world-renowned expert on Arctic sea ice, with Paul Beckwith, AMEG blogger.
SUMMARY:
There is strong evidence of advanced acceleration in:
• Arctic warming and sea ice decline in a vicious cycle
• Substantial ice loss in Greenland with potential massive loss due to unstable glaciers
• Disruption of jet stream behaviour, with abrupt climate change leading to crop failures, rising food prices and conflict in the Northern Hemisphere
• Rapid emissions of methane from the Arctic seabed, permafrost and tundra.
The tipping point for the Arctic sea ice has already passed.
Our conclusions are:
• The meltdown is accelerating and could become unstoppable as early as Sept 2015
• Immediate action must be taken to refreeze the Arctic to halt runaway melting
• Greenhouse gas emissions reduction, however drastic, cannot solve this problem
• Calculations show that powerful interventions are needed to cool the Arctic
• Any delay escalates the risk of failure
• Arctic meltdown is a catastrophic threat for civilisation.
AMEG therefore calls for the immediate setting up of a task force, specifically mandated to ensure that the Arctic is cooled as quickly and safely as possible.
They have this banner from Peter Wadhams (who recently thought big oil was sending out climate science assassins) on the AMEG website:
Meanwhile, Arctic Ice is stubbornly holding on just one month away from peak melt, which occurs typically in mid-Sptember:
So, I’m sure the AMEG won’t be happy about this new study that suggests nature has already cancelled their emergency, likely from already dealing with the issue over millennia:
From PRINCETON UNIVERSITY and the department of canceled emergencies, comes this very inconvenient study
On warmer Earth, most of Arctic may remove, not add, methane
However, new research led by Princeton University researchers and published in The ISME Journal in August suggests that, thanks to methane-hungry bacteria, the majority of Arctic soil might actually be able to absorb methane from the atmosphere rather than release it. Furthermore, that ability seems to become greater as temperatures rise.
The researchers found that Arctic soils containing low carbon content — which make up 87 percent of the soil in permafrost regions globally — not only remove methane from the atmosphere, but also become more efficient as temperatures increase. During a three-year period, a carbon-poor site on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada’s Arctic region consistently took up more methane as the ground temperature rose from 0 to 18 degrees Celsius (32 to 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The researchers project that should Arctic temperatures rise by 5 to 15 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, the methane-absorbing capacity of “carbon-poor” soil could increase by five to 30 times.
The researchers found that this ability stems from an as-yet unknown species of bacteria in carbon-poor Arctic soil that consume methane in the atmosphere. The bacteria are related to a bacterial group known as Upland Soil Cluster Alpha, the dominant methane-consuming bacteria in carbon-poor Arctic soil. The bacteria the researchers studied remove the carbon from methane to produce methanol, a simple alcohol the bacteria process immediately. The carbon is used for growth or respiration, meaning that it either remains in bacterial cells or is released as carbon dioxide.
First author Chui Yim “Maggie” Lau, an associate research scholar in Princeton’s Department of Geosciences, said that although it’s too early to claim that the entire Arctic will be a massive methane “sink” in a warmer world, the study’s results do suggest that the Arctic could help mitigate the warming effect that would be caused by a rising amount of methane in the atmosphere. In immediate terms, climate models that project conditions on a warmer Earth could use this study to more accurately calculate the future methane content of the atmosphere, Lau said.
“At our study sites, we are more confident that these soils will continue to be a sink under future warming. In the future, the Arctic may not have atmospheric methane increase as much as the rest of the world,” Lau said. “We don’t have a direct answer as to whether these Arctic soils will offset global atmospheric methane or not, but they will certainly help the situation.”
The researchers want to study the bacteria’s physiology as well as test the upper temperature threshold and methane concentrations at which they can still efficiently process methane, Lau said. Field observations showed that the bacteria are still effective up to 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and can remove methane down to one-quarter of the methane level in the atmosphere, which is around 0.5 parts-per-million.
“If these bacteria can still work in a future warmer climate and are widespread in other Arctic permafrost areas, maybe they could regulate methane for the whole globe,” Lau said. “These regions may seem isolated from the world, but they may have been doing things to help the world.”
###
M.C.Y. Lau, B.T. Stackhouse, A.C. Layton, A. Chauhan, T. A. Vishnivetskaya, K. Chourey, J. Ronholm, N.C.S. Mykytczuk, P.C. Bennett, G. Lamarche-Gagnon, N. Burton, W.H. Pollard, C.R. Omelon, D.M. Medvigy, R.L. Hettich, S.M. Pfiffner, L.G. Whyte, and T.C. Onstott. 2015. An active atmospheric methane sink in high Arctic mineral cryosols. The ISME Journal. Article published in print August 2015. DOI:10.1038/ismej.2015.13.
Abstract
Methane (CH4) emission by carbon-rich cryosols at the high latitudes in Northern Hemisphere has been studied extensively. In contrast, data on the CH4 emission potential of carbon-poor cryosols is limited, despite their spatial predominance. This work employs CH4 flux measurements in the field and under laboratory conditions to show that the mineral cryosols at Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian high Arctic consistently consume atmospheric CH4. Omics analyses present the first molecular evidence of active atmospheric CH4-oxidizing bacteria (atmMOB) in permafrost-affected cryosols, with the prevalent atmMOB genotype in our acidic mineral cryosols being closely related to Upland Soil Cluster α. The atmospheric (atm) CH4 uptake at the study site increases with ground temperature between 0 °C and 18 °C. Consequently, the atm CH4 sink strength is predicted to increase by a factor of 5-30 as the Arctic warms by 5-15 °C over a century. We demonstrate that acidic mineral cryosols are a previously unrecognized potential of CH4 sink that requires further investigation to determine its potential impact on larger scales. This study also calls attention to the poleward distribution of atmMOB, as well as to the potential influence of microbial atm CH4 oxidation, in the context of regional CH4 flux models and global warming.
I think that a significant paper relating to this statement from wadhams et al is this from 2014:
Marine cloud brightening:
regional applications
John Latham, Alan Gadian,,JimFournier
BenParkes,, Peter Wadhams,and Jack Chen
The general principle behind the marine cloud brightening (MCB) climate engineering technique
is that seeding marine stratocumulus clouds with substantial concentrations of roughly monodisperse
sub-micrometre-sized seawater particles might significantly enhance cloud albedo and longevity,thereby producing a cooling effect. This paper is concerned with preliminary studies of the possible beneficial application of MCB to three regional issues: (1) recovery of polar ice loss, (2) weakening of developing hurricanes and (3) elimination or reduction of coral bleaching.
The primary focus is on Item 1. We focus discussion herein on advantages associated with engaging in limited-area seeding,regional effects rather than global; and the levels of seeding that may be required to address changing current and near-term conditions in the Arctic. We also mention the possibility that MCB might be capable of producing a localized cooling to help
stabilize the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/2031/20140053.short
“Marine cloud brightening” appears to be the answer to all the horrors that human intervention has inflicted upon the planet , but I have not yet ascertained how exactly this is to be brought about . More research needed.
If we are lucky this ‘answer to all the horrors that human intervention has inflicted upon the planet’ won’t work but there is a very real chance that such an intervention would push the planet into a new ice age.
Now that would be Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Life, uh, finds a way.
Bacteria that consume methanol? Don’t they know it will make them go blind?
Washington Rules of Order: 1) Never let a good a catastrophe go to waste or be dispelled, and 2) Those stupid Americans will believe anything from Harvard consulting and others. And if they do find out about it that will be too late to undo the policy reach.
damn….next thing you know they will discover carbon
Just to give everybody perspective on the “methane emergency”, here is Figure 2.2 from AR5’s Chapter 2, Observations Atmosphere and Surface.
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/methane.png
Note well this figure ends in 2012 or 2013. Note that atmospheric methane appears, if anything, to be saturating at just under 1800 ppm. Its growth rate has been decreasing across the entire “hockey stick” part of global warming, and it appeared to flatten out completely from 2000 to maybe 2008. There is another figure I’ve seen that compares observed methane concentration to the concentration predicted by models, and they are among the greatest failures of all of the model results, with the wrong curvature let alone the wrong value — methane concentration is supposed to be increasing faster — accelerating — not diminishing.
One is tempted to use methane as a thermometer. If we do, we note that very clearly methane concentration increases more slowly the warmer it gets, apparently approaching a “terminal concentration” that might well be indendent or nearly so of global temperature, or that might be a “tipping point” the other way — any temperatures higher than this will actively decrease average methane concentration in the atmosphere. In that case, it is yet another negative feedback on global warming, as it will autoregulate the total greenhouse effect downward given any further temperature increase.
It also makes one wonder if the small bump in the rate of concentration increase post 2008 is a sign that the atmosphere actually cooled somewhat in that time frame, back to the temperatures extant from 1993 to 1998. At any rate, there is clearly a “pause” as the rate of change of atmospheric methane has had no meaningful trend all the way back to 1993, and its overall clearly negative from 1980 to the present.
Bacteria eating methane is a pretty good explanation for this, but it doesn’t really explain the difference in atmospheric/tropospheric methane concentration between the warmer northern hemisphere and colder southern hemisphere. This difference is really profound. One wonders if it all by itself is responsible for the melting of the arctic and freezing of the antarctic.
Since methane is (apparently) mostly produced by life, not release of oceanic methane, this could be interpreted as yet another side effect of increased CO2, which very clearly boosts the entire biosphere to a higher level — it warms, makes things a bit wetter, directly fertilizes plant growth, indirectly increases nitrogen fixation, and increases transpiration efficiency in C3 (and to a lesser extent C4 and CAM) plants. There is simply more stuff being grown produced every year to rot down into (among other things) methane, both plant matter and animal that eats the plant matter. It is indeed very telling that almost none of the massive bolus of methane released in the Gulf Oil Disaster even reached the surface. It was frozen out at the bottom and eaten on the way up, and hence failed to produce an expected methane plume over the southeast US. Methane, Ozone, NO_x, and OH have a complicated chemistry in the upper atmosphere, as well, that makes it difficult to fully understand the impact of methane on the concentration of other GHGs and aerosols and vice versa.
Overall, it seems pretty reasonable to question any assertion of an imminent methane postive feedback emergency. If anything, methane levels in the atmosphere appear to be levelling, which makes sense if they are mostly the product of and a proxy for the health of the biosphere. It is also consistent with the discovery that methane in water is food, rapidly consumed by bacteria, and it seems not unreasonable that this will prove to be true to at least some extent in wet terrestrial soils as well, methane being consumed on the spot as it is produced and converted into CO2 and water (or methanol, or something else). Unfortunately, papers that look at methane concentrations and use the observational data to argue that there is no emergency and that methane is unlikely to ever be a major player in global warming seem for some reason I cannot father to be popular or common, where papers that allege that methane will — excuse me, “might” (under unspecified and indeed unspecifiable conditions) — produce runaway greenhouse warming seem to be the rule.
Personally, I think a lot more research energy might be put into understanding the difference between NH and SH methane concentration. Methane is very definitely not a well-mixed gas in the troposphere, and that is odd. A second oddity is that methane is extremely “light” — a molecular weight of only 16, less than almost any other component of the atmosphere. One rather expects it to be comparatively light enough to invert comparatively rapidly and be more highly concentrated in the upper troposphere and stratosphere.
However, in the upper troposphere, increased concentration could easily have an anti greenhouse effect — it could represent an additional pathway for atmospheric heat to be lost to a much greater depth than CO2 or H2O. At a saturated concentration, it could actually reduce the rate of greenhouse warming due to CO2 by short-circuiting the radiation resistance and lowering the effective emission height to a lower, warmer layer of the troposphere in its bands. But all of this is very complicated indeed, and I can’t solve the equations in my head either…
rgb
organic matter exposed to UV can generate methane. It can also be released from carbonaceous chondrite meteorites as this Nature paper showed. Maybe solar UV is creating methane under diminished stratospheric ozone?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11203.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20120607
Bacteria eating methane is a pretty good explanation for this….
Since methane is (apparently) mostly produced by life… – rgb
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Methane eating bacteria are–if you think about it logistically–a pretty good reason to doubt the story of biological origin accounting for anything but a tiny fraction of Earth’s methane budget.
Methanotrophs infest the planet from pole to pole, from the deepest anoxic sediments to the oxygen-rich surface. More than 80% of all methane produced below the ocean is consumed by anaerobic microbes before it reaches the sediments, leaving less than 20% for
i) aerobic microbes in the sediments,
ii) production of methane hydrates in the sediments, and
iii) aerobic microbes in the water column
Producing methane hydrate from that small portion of the total production budget still gives us around twice the amount of carbon locked up in all known gas, oil and coil reserves, despite the fact that greedy microbes have been eating the stuff for millions upon millions of years.
http://living-petrol.blogspot.com/ncr
Methanogens, in contrast, are a niche market microbe that’s hard to find, because it requires a supply of hydrogen or acetic acid in an oxygen-free environment. That is why the microbes responsible for all the methane hydrates on Earth remain hypothetical and surreal.
*****
“Below the seafloor, an unknown but potentially vast biosphere of microbes may be making the methane that percolates upward. ”
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2441
*****
If you take the current estimated volcanic Carbon production at some few tenths of a GtC per year and multiply it by, say, 3 billion years, you get an awful lot of Carbon for the wee beasties to work with that is totally unaccounted for by many orders of magnitude in the reservoirs of any published Carbon Cycle. Carbon cannot leave the planet. Only Hydrogen and Helium can.
This metabolism can be all anaerobic and the beasties have been at it for well over 3 billion years. We oxidizers think nothing but photosynthesis and oxidation, but an entirely different balanced reducing world is possible…even likely.
While some higher level lifeforms were inconvenienced and even injured, the bacteria had a feast on the oil spill in the Caribbean Sea, too. Bacteria are Earth’s, and, it seems, man’s best friend, too.
Whatever they did it worked! The ice is returning to the North Pole and Santa will not drown.
I think the plan was to gather all the ice machines from fast food joints in Canada, and have them continually dump ice in the ocean on the west coast of Ellesmere Island.
Bravo for these scientists, their quick thinking and more importantly, their quick action.
Now, I’ve heard of ‘vicious circles’, but is a ‘vicious cycle’ some form of two-wheeled transport minus the saddle?
Ouch! A few years back when I lived in suburbia, a neighbor’s kid rode one of those and ended up in the hospital with a temporary colostomy.
Measured in parts per billion – data doesn’t look too scary to me (similar to the CO2 scare – predictions vs observed):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/27/methane-deceptions/:
All we need now to spoil the whole show is bacteria that consumes Co2 . . . GM preferably!
Jim that job’s been covered by photosynthesis for millennia.
…not to mention photosynthetic bacteria.
http://www.whatarebacteria.com/photosynthetic-bacteria/
Hint to alarmists: These bacteria produce CO2 as a waste product. Better jump on that.
This Wadham guy reminds me of Yasser Arafat.
Intoxicated lying for living does something distinct, Baghdad-Bob-like to your face.
(sarcasm ahead alert for those who type before they think)
This threat is so dire & immediate that it is imperative that all nuclear weapons in the world be detonated immediately. Destroying humanity is the only way to save humanity…. or at least me & my bevy of 20 yr old beauties hiding deep in my bunker. I don’t give a rip about the rest of you.
It was well known that CH4 had a warming potential of 23 times that of CO2. Now suddenly – via Wiki of course – the goalposts have been moved. Sounds like Connolly at work all over again.