From Washington State University and “the EPA and ecos now have another new tool to prevent new reservoirs in California” department:
VANCOUVER, Wash. – Washington State University researchers say the world’s reservoirs are an underappreciated source of greenhouse gases, producing the equivalent of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year, or 1.3 percent of all greenhouse gases produced by humans.
That’s more greenhouse gas production than all of Canada.
Writing [this] week’s journal BioScience, the WSU researchers say reservoirs are a particularly important source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide over the course of a century. Reservoir methane production is comparable to rice paddies or biomass burning, both of which are included in emission estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international authority on the subject.
John Harrison, co-author and associate professor in the WSU Vancouver School of the Environment, last month attended a meeting in Minsk, Belarus, to discuss including reservoir emissions in a planned 2019 IPCC update of how countries report their greenhouse gas inventories.
Methane accounts for 80 percent
“We had a sense that methane might be pretty important but we were surprised that it was as important as it was,” said Bridget Deemer, WSU research associate and lead author. “It’s contributing right around 80 percent of the total global warming impact of all those gases from reservoirs. It’s a pretty important piece of the budget.”
The BioScience analysis, which drew on scores of other studies, is the largest and most comprehensive look to date at the link between reservoirs and greenhouse gases, Harrison said.
“Not only does it incorporate the largest number of studies,” he said. “It also looks at more types of greenhouse gases than past studies.”
Acre per acre, reservoirs emit 25 percent more methane than previously thought, he said.
The researchers acknowledge that reservoirs provide important services like electrical power, flood control, navigation and water. But reservoirs have also altered the dynamics of river ecosystems, impacting fish and other life forms. Only lately have researchers started to look at reservoirs’ impact on greenhouse gases.
“While reservoirs are often thought of as ‘green’ or carbon neutral sources of energy, a growing body of work has documented their role as greenhouse gas sources,” Deemer, Harrison and their colleagues write.
Gases from decomposing organic matter
Unlike natural water bodies, reservoirs tend to have flooded large amounts of organic matter that produce carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide as they decompose. Reservoirs also receive a lot of organic matter and “nutrients” like nitrogen and phosphorous from upstream rivers, which can further stimulate greenhouse gas production
In 2000, BioScience published one of the first papers to assert that reservoir greenhouse gases contribute substantially to global warming. Since then, there has been a nine-fold increase in studies of reservoirs and greenhouse gases. Where earlier studies tended to be confined to reservoirs behind power stations, the newer studies also looked at reservoirs used for flood control, water storage, navigation and irrigation.
The WSU researchers are the first to consider methane bubbling in models of reservoir greenhouse gas emissions. Also, while previous papers have found that young, tropical reservoirs emit more methane than older, more northern systems, this study finds that the total global warming effect of a reservoir is best predicted by how biologically productive it is, with more algae and nutrient rich systems producing more methane.
The authors also report higher per-area rates of methane emission from reservoirs than have been reported previously. This means that acre-for-acre the net effect of new reservoirs on atmospheric greenhouse gases will be greater than previously thought. Reservoir construction around the globe is expected to proceed rapidly in coming decades.
Largest study of reservoir greenhouse gas emissions
“There’s been a growing sense in the literature that methane bubbles are a really important component of the total emissions from lake and reservoir ecosystems,” said Deemer. “This study revisited the literature to try and synthesize what we know about the magnitude and control on methane emissions and other greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.”
The result is that, in addition to being the largest study of reservoir greenhouse gas emissions to date, it is the first to comprehensively look at the flow of all three major greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide—from reservoirs to the atmosphere.
The work is in keeping with WSU’s Grand Challenges, a suite of research initiatives aimed at large societal issues. It is particularly relevant to the challenge of sustainable resources and its themes of supplying food, energy and water for future generations.
Funding sources include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Climate Preparedness and Resilience Programs, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. None of the funders had a role in the design of the research or the interpretation of its results.
All well and good, but I wonder, what would these researchers find if they performed the same study on natural lakes? It seems to me that natural lakes exhibit all of the same processes, but over longer time scales. They say in the PR
Unlike natural water bodies, reservoirs tend to have flooded large amounts of organic matter that produce carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide as they decompose. Reservoirs also receive a lot of organic matter and “nutrients” like nitrogen and phosphorous from upstream rivers, which can further stimulate greenhouse gas production.
That may be true, but many natural lakes have formed in the same way, rivers and streams do get blocked by natural events to produce natural lakes. Plus, there is a time limit, most reservoirs have been built in the last 100 years, and once the flooded biomass decays, the peaks they may observe disappear. And, there are scores of reports of natural lake producing methane seeps, such as this one documented by NASA in the Arctic. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/user-resources/sensing-our-planet/leaking-lakes
And there are others. Mono Lake in California, a large, shallow saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin was shown in 1987 to have significant methane seeps:
Click to access Mono.NatlGas.GCA.pdf
In a 2009 study of methane seeps in Qalluuraq Lake by the University of Alaska, where the lake produces so much methane that they considered harnessing it to power the village of Atqasuk, they note:
Recent work revealed that seeps may contribute as much as 50-70 million tones of atmospheric CH4 per year, or ~10% of global sources.
http://ine.uaf.edu/werc/werc-projects/methane-gas-seeps/
Now, I’m not sure who’s right. University of Alaska says by the above statement that total global sources of methane would be about 500-700 million tonnes, yet in this new WSU study fingering reservoirs, they says “…roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year”.
Hmmm, somebody’s assessment is off.
For reference, here is a March 2016 graph of methane emissions:
And finally, I think these researchers are making some assumptions about how reservoirs are built that might not be true about the amount of flooded biomass. For example, note the treeline at Lake Oroville in California in this photo – they removed the trees prior to filling:
Oh well, it makes great AGW theater:
After stumbling across this just yesterday.
http://www.ecowatch.com/hydropower-methane-climate-change-2024731803.html
I searched WUWT to see if this scurrilous effort to discount hydropower as renewal had been discussed here.
This claim in the additional linked piece from that…
http://www.ecowatch.com/dams-cause-climate-change-they-are-not-clean-energy-1881943019.html
“Organic material—vegetation, sediment and soil—flows from rivers into reservoirs and decomposes emitting methane and carbon dioxide into the water and then the air throughout the hydro-electric generation cycle. ”
What about the rivers themselves? The Columbia river for instance?
The organic material in reservoirs is not created by the dams. It would be rotting in the river anyway.
This is no more than a continued effort to further disqualify renewable hydropower as being renewable in order to create a false, elevated need for wind and solar renewable with subsidies.
Some years ago the lying Sierra Club successfully lobbied greasy politicians in California, Oregon and Washington to remove their hydro from renewable category in order to concoct the tall tale for wind and solar subsidies.
The entire arena and agenda is a rotting stench of corruption.
Steve Oregon, The truth is by the methodology employed in these studies the common beaver, nutria, and musk rat need to be considered dangerous rodents in need of careful monitoring and inhibited from extending their ranges. More jobs for uselessly miseducated youth.
You are correct, fossilage, ……the wetlands created by Beaver dams are little more than rotting biomass cesspools that are outgassing copious amounts of CO2 and CH4.
“HA”, it’s a good thing that the fur traders/trappers killed millions of Beavers during the 18th and 19th Centuries, ….. otherwise the atmospheric CO2 would surely be around 600 ppm now days.
According to the emissions graph shown above, the fastest rate of growth appears to have been between 2000 and 2005. This is interesting (or simply nonsense). Atmospheric methane showed zero growth during this period. Further, AFAIK there is no accepted explanation for the growth in atmospheric methane which re-started in 2006/2007, other than it not being consistent with fossil fuels. The incremental methane in the atmosphere since then has a δ13C value that is, at least on average, lower than the current atmospheric level of -47.4 per mil. A back-of-the-envelope calculation gives a value for the incremental methane of -55 per mil. This is by no means definitive, but does imply a greater influence from biogenic sources than from thermogenic sources. Indeed, that was the conclusion of a new paper referenced here:
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/wetlands_and_agriculture_not_fossil_fuels_behind_the_global_rise_in_methane-180488
What we don’t have is any explanation for the growth restarting.
A useful source of methane data can be found here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=BRW&program=ccgg&type=ts
Note the picture of Lake Oroville. When it was first flooded about 47 years ago, there was considerable vegetation left on the hillsides. Today, as is typical with at least most California reservoirs, the lowering water has exposed denuded shorelines. While some of that vegetation may have become waterlogged and sunk into deeper, colder waters, the picture doesn’t make a strong case for actively decomposing organic material. Anyone who has swum in the lake knows that in the Summer there is often a strong thermocline a couple meters below the surface that betrays the cold bottom temperatures. The cold inhibits bacterial decomposition. Something that should be explored is whether the annual algae blooms are contributing to the claimed methane releases.
I am really surprised that no one has attempted to study the CO2 output at all the sports stadiums around the world this weekend, or any weekend for that matter. I wonder what they would find.
Isn’t it great that we live in a wealthy society that can afford such foolishness?
+1
(not that I approve of the foolishness, of course)
Janice, that’s a +1 from me.
Well, thank you, Mike. 🙂
They’re missing the one obvious solution. Reduce the number of humans breathing CO2 out into the atmosphere. Maybe they could come up with a table that would allow us to determine how many people we would have to ‘eliminate’ from an area to counter the effect of the proposed reservoir? Or, in the case of California, a table to equate the effect of cows & reservoirs so any municipality that has cows & wants a reservoir can determine how many cows they’ll have to slaughter to ‘balance’ things out. Hey, wait, maybe Cali should pass legislation requiring ALL residents to be vegetarian or vegan — no meat allowed.
I believe they would like no more than 500 million people on earth for maximum sustainability.
Ya, and algae, who needs algae turning CO2 into CH-stuffs and O2
Regarding “Now, I’m not sure who’s right. University of Alaska says by the above statement that total global sources of methane would be about 500-700 million tonnes, yet in this new WSU study fingering reservoirs, they says “…roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year”:
Using the figure of methane being 34 times as potent as CO2, that gigaton of CO2 (equivalent) is about 30 million tonnes of methane.
And since, 34 x negligible (overwhelmed by the supervening proximate cause of water vapor) = negligible,
the impact of methane is:
virtually nothing.
That you “think” or “believe” methane causes any change in the climate of the earth is not science. It is pure speculation.
Janice, It’s faith like the belief in AGW.
“Funding sources include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Climate Preparedness and Resilience Programs, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. None of the funders had a role in the design of the research or the interpretation of its results.”
C’mon. Does anybody, anywhere, seriously believe that the Obama administration’s US Army’s ‘Climate Preparedness and Resilience Program’ (scare quote emphasis mine); or the (we the NSF members better get with the Obama administration’s program) NSF; or the Obama administration’s EPA had any role whatsoever in this research, or its design, or its interpretation? I call bull on that, especially since they came right out and made that claim. Otherwise, why even bring it up? Those high living public servants are poking us right in the eye.
Avid sport fishermen can tell you that newly created reservoirs are fishing hotspots, for the first few years after being filled with water. After that, the fishing action slows down to a relative steady state. Why? Because initially, there is indeed a wealth of newly submerged biomass within and on the soil of the lake bed which contributes to the food chain, but it is sequestered, or used up and depleted after a few years. Nutrient replenishment from runoff and erosion never again reaches initial conditions.
If only you’d put this phrase in the introduction:
“…methane bubbling in models of reservoir greenhouse …”
Then I would have known that this ‘study’ is just more made up excrement-in, excrement-out computer games and stopped reading.
Do climastrologists ever get off their fundamental orifii and go outside to actually measure anything anymore?
“climastrologists”
I am so stealing that. 😀
The National Hydropower Association released a statement to counter these claims. There was a news article about it that I am sharing a link with, as I thought the whole article was too long to copy and paste here.
http://tinyurl.com/jjwuust
What a tragedy that these people wasted so much of their lives on this trivial “study!” At best, they are rearranging the whoopie cushions on the deck chairs of the Titanic.
And, I’m pretty sure, Mr. Kafkazar is saying that AGW/CAGW is “The Titanic” (not the earth).
Ha! No “planetary emerrrrgenceeeeeee!” — just the SS AGW sinking due to the water that rushed through all the holes in it (rats clinging to whatever they can find to keep afloat)!
BLAM! BLAM!
The Science Big Guns of WUWT won the battle**!
*
*
*
**Yes, yes, the War for Truth will go on until time is no more, but the BATTLE is won — just the pesky, pernicious, mopping up operations which, yes, will take years, but
AGW
is
over.
The war is not over. And WUWT may have won the battle but, that doesn’t mean WUWT has won the war. Heck, WUWT can win every battle and still lose the CAGW war.
The CAGW war won’t be won until the body is cold, dead and buried. And even then, I’d view the grave with a dose of skepticism.
As we speak, the POTUS is making stuff up to excuse his draconian (and probably illegal) actions to control “carbon.”
The drying up of the Aral sea should help with this problem.
/s
Great. So now California, in addition to regulating Cow Flatulence, will start regulating Fish Flatulence.
With these methane emissions higher than previously thought, they can upload the new data into the climate models and be even more out of whack with reality.
If there are any young people reading this, there are a couple of basic things you may not know about reservoirs and dams.
Dams across rivers perform any one or all of these 8 uses:
1. Dams provide reliable and inexpensive electricity to the state and to neighboring states
2. Dams provide irrigation to the surrounding valleys and hills, which are then planted with vinyards, orchards, and cereal crops
3. Dams control flooding, when not mismanaged
4. Dams provide drinking water for communities
5. Dams make rivers which are too shallow for part of the year navigable
6. Dams provide reserves for fish and birds
7. Dams reduce the soil erosion on the banks by reducing the river’s current
8. Dams provide a place to go and boat, hike, or fish
And so when environmentalists who are hawking Anthropocene Age Science tell people that reservoirs emit gases which cause global climate problems, you need to be able to understand what they are asking you to throw away.
It is like a man who becomes convinced that various bricks in his home have no use, until he has torn down his own house with his own hands. Or, it is like the person who begins to delete all the programs on his computer that he does not recognize and does not think he needs. When he is done, he has cleaned his computer in his own mind. But in fact he has removed essential services and is going to have a brick.
Good luck, and I hope you can understand a little better what has been done by previous generations, which we have inherited, and which they engineered for many good reasons.
Before I respond to your post, I would like you to know that I am not an environmentalist, right-wing, left-wing, democratic or republican or any other label/stereotype one might attach to another based on that others opinion.
1.”Dams provide reliable and inexpensive electricity to the state and to neighboring states”
That’s false and vague at best. Canada is building more and more dams every year and the cost of power is going up always. Not to mention how much power is sold to the NE Atlantic states from Quebec.
2.”Dams provide irrigation to the surrounding valleys and hills, which are then planted with vineyards, orchards, and cereal crops”
True, but not to the extant one might think. Vineyards and cereal crops don not require that much water anyway, and most grain farmers already have climates that provide more than enough water for their wheat etc.
3.”Dams control flooding, when not mismanaged”
Its not that easy, especially during 3-4″ rainfalls when a thunderstorm just unloads- theres only so much they can hold back upstream. So flooding an area manages flooding in another???? that’s a weak argument to make in favor of dams.
4.”Dams provide drinking water for communities”
True, but really only to subdivisions and cities, but to most out in the country side…… aren’t wells there main source? Regardless that’s not a bad example, so I agree there with you.
5.”Dams make rivers which are too shallow for part of the year navigable”
Really dude? I can go off on this one, but I won’t. I don’t want to be here all night.
6.”Dams provide reserves for fish and birds”
False! they actually harm river fish and most need to move up and down rivers freely for various reasons. And as for birds, they prefer the shallow waters of swamps and ponds and not these large… deep dead lakes.
7.” Dams reduce the soil erosion on the banks by reducing the river’s current”
Only downstream and not at times after torrential pours.
8.”Dams provide a place to go and boat, hike, or fish”
Again, just like 6, its a deep dead lake. What about all the hiking that people used to do along the river terrace for miles and miles that can no longer take place because an area the size of Manhattan has now been flooded out???
Hydro dams are not “green energy”. Do you people have any idea how much concrete is needed for a dam? All the truck loads back and forth huh???
What about flooding the surrounding area, what about all the people displaced because of these dams?
What about the 1000’s of miles of forest destroyed and logged just to build the lines across vast tracks of wilderness??
Come here to Canada and go visit western Quebec and tell me what man in his right mind would approve of such a thing?
Almost every wild river across northern Canada has either been dammed once or multiple times or is being studied for a dam…. and for what? Not for me or you and your home, but for industry. Industry takes mans birthright, rapes it, sells it back to you and pollutes it in the process.
And lets not forget the minor earthquakes that are now caused by some of the worlds largest reservoirs. Here in Canada the government is well aware of this and has openly admitted that it is happening.
How dare they take these arteries and pinch them the way they do…. how dare they.
Screw the EPA, screw those for it, screw Agenda 21. Agenda 21 and the rewilding project is the major reason that dams are being taken out or no longer being approved, but my resistance to dams has nothing to do with agenda 21.
I just think that dams are a terrible destructive thing to do to the earth, along with the production of radioactive waste.
@ur momisugly kenin – October 3, 2016 at 6:44 pm
And I assume you have the same exact opinion about the construction of all the railroads and highways in North America in that you also believe they were/are “terrible destructive things to do to the earth ”, ………. RIGHT?
@ur momisugly Samuel
Some industry is much less harmful than others. You can build railways and roads without having to reroute water and log 1000 miles of forest. And are you really making the comparison between roads/railways and radio active waste. Tell Samuel: what do they do with radioactive waste?
So, I guess it is a good thing that Lake Aral is finally drying up, and we are on our way to empty out Lake Mead.
Hilarious that Canadians are so worried about nicer weather.
“It’s [methane] contributing right around 80 percent of the total global warming impact of all those gases from reservoirs.”
I wonder if they bothered to include water vapor evaporating from the reservoirs in that analysis?
Reservoirs are for flood control, hydro, irrigation, recreation, even environmental remediation, or some combination of such.
Reservoirs that drain annually are going to behave differently than those that don’t drain or change significantly with respect to elevation. Methane production in reservoirs that drain 90% of their volume (I made that up) is 75% (made this up to) less than recreational reservoirs that do not drain. As such recreational reservoirs are the main culprit in reservoir contribution to our eventual demise.
Since the subject study did not differentiate between types of reservoirs that were sampled, more study will be needed … please send money.
DonM, there are quite a few Army Corps dams that were built specifically for “flood control” but also provide tremendous recreational value all year round, ……. even during the late Fall, Winter and early Spring when the water-level behind the dam has been reduced by at least 75%.
Iffen it’s a flood control dam ……. it can’t function as such iffen it is filled to the brim with water when or if the seasonal flooding occurs.
There are three (3) Army Corps “flood control” dams within 23 miles of where I live. 1 to the North, 1 to the South and 1 that is 2 1/2 miles up-river.
That’s my point (I’m not real good at making it clear at times). Reservoirs operate differently; since they operate differently throughout the year, it is not reasonable to lump them all together and assume that the C02 and methane outputs are the same across the board.
My guess is that flood control facilities (with annual significant drawdown) produce methane or CO2 as a small fraction of year-round stable/static facilities.
(Cottage Grove, Dorena, & Lowell?)
“Funding sources include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Climate Preparedness and Resilience Programs, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. None of the funders had a role in the design of the research or the interpretation of its results.”
While our Military are underfunded and have reduced training, poor maintenance, and massive cuts in readiness, it is unconscionable that we are squandering their budget on such foolish activities at the orders of the Commander. I guess this is in addition to the annual $20+ budgeted for climate change, also squandered.
20+ billion dollars
Dams are not for you nor was that ever the intention of big industry. Dams were and have always been for industry.
The major energy hogs are all commercial in nature. The common man and his home need very little in the way of electricity.
Go independent, produce your own and divest from these goons.
kenin: The “common man” works for and is kept fed and clothed and sheltered by “big industry.” His home may not need much electricity, but his dentist’s office and hospital, do. Ahem.
GO, “BIG INDUSTRY!” 🙂
Janice you have to understand kenin not an left wing environmentalist; he’s an anarchist eco-loon
At Janice
First of all, I’m not against all industry, some industry should and can be done within reason.
Also, our poor way of life and decisions-especially the past few decades have just raised our level of dependency on industry.
Do you really think we need diamond mines?- is that a necessity?
Do we really need mining for uranium, just we can hide the radioactive waste 2km below the earths crust.?
What about asbestos?
get my drift?
I can justify proper logging practices and proper mining practices for things that we need and last. But some other crap is far to destructive, invasive or far too large.
What I can’t justify is you and others avoiding all the points I raised in my post, not too mention Fossilsage who resorts to insults and nothing of substance. I’m not an anarchist eco-loon you troll.
Hydro dams are garbage and my 1o years of research clearly shows that. Both of you go ask the people of Chile and China who lost their homes and themselves after large corporations FORCED them off their land in the name of electricity.
Canada’s pension plan has a lot of money invested in those dams out in Chile, if you guys only knew.
The “common man,” as you put it, Kenin, buys food, autos, electronics, housing, furniture, clothing, carpeting, water, and dozens of other things that are shipped and/or manufactured using energy, much of it electrical. That’s on my planet; I don’t know what it’s like on your planet.
You can still have those things without hydro dams or nuclear- tools…all of you!
I take it at you own or use nothing made of Aluminum?
That won’t work for anyone living in a city, with regulations, particularly with rental property – particularly in blue states where property rights are becoming virtually non-existent.
As farm ponds age, the oxygen content of the pond decreases, and, the methane produced from aerobic vegetation decomposition becomes a factor in fish survival.
Now, there is aeration of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs that proved oxygen to pond/lake/reservoir lower levels that mitigate methane production and provide an environment for fish survival. Hmm, provide oxygen in oxygen starved regions of bodies of water, and voila, fruitful benefits. A surface oxygenator, maybe using photo electronic power.
I guess it all depends upon what is important and what an environmental group wants to support:: continued vociferous objections or a little fresh air into the system?
OMG they forgot about water vapour. Imagine, all those reservoirs pumping out water vapour into the atmosphere. Gasp – not only is it Worse Than We Thought, it’s even Worse Than We’re Capable of Thinking.
Perhaps they’re saving the water vapour for their next blockbuster publication. That must be it. Why squander all your doom-and-gloom in a single paper?
To get serious for a minute; this study would have real meaning if they had compared the emissions from reservoirs with emissions from the same geographic area before it was flooded (nearby similar terrain would do quite well as a proxy in a real study). It would also have studied changes in emissions from a freshly flooded area as it evolved into a mature reservoir and used up all the land vegetation that originally was present. It would also have considered what might have happened to all the upstream organic debris that settles in a reservoir and rots, if the reservoir had not been there. Do they imagine that it just vanishes?
I’ve commented before on the exponential growth in the number of universities and the inevitable consequent decline in the quality of research they generate. You could hardly find a better example of what happens to research when it’s performed by people who probably wouldn’t recognise a piece of critical reasoning if it jumped up and bit them in the nuts.