Guest post by David Middleton
From the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” files:
Are methane seeps in the Arctic slowing global warming?
By Randall HymanMay. 8, 2017 , 3:00 PM
Good news about climate change is especially rare in the Arctic. But now comes news that increases in one greenhouse gas—methane—lead to the dramatic decline of another. Research off the coast of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago suggests that where methane gas bubbles up from seafloor seeps, surface waters directly above absorb twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as surrounding waters. The findings suggest that—in isolated spots in the Arctic—methane seeps in isolated spots in the Arctic could lessen the impact of climate change.
“This is … totally unexpected,” says Brett Thornton, a geochemist at Stockholm University who was not involved in the research. These new findings challenge the popular assumption that methane seeps inevitably increase the global greenhouse gas burden.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Molecule for molecule, it traps nearly 30 times as much heat in the atmosphere as CO2. But scientists know relatively little about its role in the global carbon cycle. Most atmospheric methane comes from biological sources—belching bovines and bacteria feasting on decomposing litter—or from the burning of fossil fuels. In the ocean, methane bubbles up from deep seeps, where it is often stored in icelike crystal lattices of water called hydrates. When those hydrates “melt,” because of changing temperatures and pressures, the methane is released, and it can percolate into the atmosphere above.
To find out just how much methane the Arctic Ocean was contributing to the global balance, biogeochemist John Pohlman of the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, set out to measure the gas close to the ocean surface above known methane seeps near Svalbard during the Arctic summer. He and his team were constantly surprised by how little methane they found. But the bigger surprise was that surface water CO2 levels dropped whenever their ship crossed a seep. “[The CO2 data] became the most important part of the story,” Pohlman says.
When combined with other data—sudden drops in water temperature, along with increases in dissolved oxygen and pH at the surface—the lower CO2 levels were telltale signs of bottom water upwelling and photosynthesis, Pohlman says. Pohlman and his team conclude that the same physical forces that are pushing the methane bubbles up are also pumping nutrient-rich cold waters from the sea bed to the surface, fertilizing phytoplankton blooms that soak up CO2, they write today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Such a “fertilization effect” would be “really surprising,” says Thornton…
[…]
In fact, the study finds that in such zones, nearly 1900 times more CO2 is being absorbed than methane emitted. That’s a small but real consolation for those concerned about global warming, Pohlman says: In these limited zones, the atmospheric benefit from CO2 sequestration is about 230 times greater than the warming effect from methane emissions.
[…]
This article raises several questions:
Why are climate “scientists” always surprised when it turns out to not be worse than previously expected?
Was this discovery so inconvenient that it justified doubling up on “in isolated spots in the Arctic” in the same sentence?
If CH4 is so much worse than CO2… Why do “scientists know relatively little about its role in the global carbon cycle,” while seeming to know everything there is to know about CO2 and its role in the global carbon cycle?
Does this mean that a controlled program of methane hydrate dislocation would help alleviate Gorebal Warming, Chicken Little of the Sea and hypoxia?
When combined with other data—sudden drops in water temperature, along with increases in dissolved oxygen and pH at the surface—the lower CO2 levels were telltale signs of bottom water upwelling and photosynthesis, Pohlman says.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“This is … totally unexpected,” says Brett Thornton, a geochemist at Stockholm University who was not involved in the research. ”
I am more impressed when scientists are amazed at what they find than when they find what they expected (i.e., needed).
Another article showing that the bias in favor of AGW is not absolute at Science Magazine.
This is good and interesting news if the study and its findings can be replicated elsewhere by other teams.
Well well well…. Who would have thought that a process that has been going on for billions of years… Mother nature would put to use and incorporate it in the cycle of life… Let me answer my own question… The Progressive/CAGW types!
Should be NOT…. CAGW types don’t believe much in negative feedbacks because that makes for stability and certainly can’t have that.
I see some comments about “trapping heat” in regards to methane. Who came up with the stupid idea that absorption of heat is “trapping” it, or even slowing down heat loss. It is the opposite of preventing heat loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_insulation
“Thermal insulation provides a region of insulation in which thermal conduction is reduced or thermal radiation is reflected rather than absorbed by the lower-temperature body.”
Look at the last words there. The exact same mechanism claimed by climate science to “trap heat”, or “prevent heat loss”, or “slow down cooling”, is what IS cooling. Absorption is what you want to avoid to prevent heat loss. How can everyone miss this. I´m starting to think skeptics are as stupid as climate priests.
It’s not being missed, at least not by most people here. But people just get lazy when they speak and write about it. We’ve had long arguments about the propaganda value of the misnamed term “greenhouse effect,” but most people just think it’s baked in, and though we understand that it’s a horrible, sloppy, unscientific misnomer, fighting it in both the scientific literature and the pop culture is a Quixotic task.
While the so-called “greenhouse effect” doesn’t work like a greenhouse, I have never been able to come up with a better nickname.
Regarding the adoption of common use language, at some point it becomes futile to fight back.
“Fracking” is a good example. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the words “frack, “fracked” or “fracking” on a well scout ticket. Hydraulic fracturing was always abbreviated as “frac.” On the rare occasions when an ‘ed or ‘ing was required, it was spelled “frac’ed” or “frac’ing.” I used to quibble about the spelling… But then I just gave up and adopted “frack, “fracked” and “fracking”… Plus, “frack, “fracked” and “fracking” work quite well as polite-ish substitutes for the “F-word.”
You can spend your time fighting all the little things.
Or you can have a life.
Can everybody adopt the same attitude to ocean acidification please? You might not like the term, but like the greenhouse effect and the spelling of fracking it has become widely accepted and there is no substitute.
I occasionally slip up and call it “ocean acidification”… but I try very hard to call it “ocean neutralization” or “Chicken Little of the Sea.”
Seawater can’t become acidic (pH < 7.0) at any CO2 concentrations experienced throughout the Phanerozoic Eon.
Yes, but like the greenhouse effect is not like a greenhouse, yet we all use the term anyway. Ocean acidification is at least in one sense technically correct, because it is becoming more acidic and it has been adopted as the term everyone uses for the effect of ocean neutralisation. I suggest that we have reached the point where it becomes futile to fight back.
Interestingly, pH 7 is not always neutrality. At high temperatures Kw of water is higher than 14, so neutrality occurs at lower pH, with higher concentrations of both H+ and OH-. This does not really affect the argument here, since the sea is not at high temperatures, but it is important to note that pH 7 and neutral are not the same thing.
pH is definitely a non-conservative quantity. Temperature, pressure, salinity and quite a few other factors come into play. That’s why it’s usually calculated from dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA).
Irrespective of its common usage, ocean acidification implies that the oceans are becoming acidic; when they are not. Even at 3,000 ppm CO2, the oceans would not be acidic.
http://instaar.colorado.edu/~marchitt/reprints/hoenischscience12.pdf
The difference sealice is that acidification is a scary term. It gives people the impression that they are going to dissolve if they take a swim.
As such, it is not a neutral term in the sense that greenhouse is.
David Middleton May 10, 2017 at 3:15 am
I occasionally slip up and call it “ocean acidification”… but I try very hard to call it “ocean neutralization” or “Chicken Little of the Sea.”
Seawater can’t become acidic (pH < 7.0) at any CO2 concentrations experienced throughout the Phanerozoic Eon.
Actually it’s far worse to call it neutralization which means equal concentrations of H+ and OH- which as you point out is virtually impossible. Seawater acidification means to increase the H+ concentration, in a lab manual if it says to ‘acidify the solution to pH8’ it means to add enough acid to achieve that pH, to neutralize the solution means to add enough acid to achieve pH7 at 25ºC.
lifeisthermal May 9, 2017 at 10:12 am
“Thermal insulation provides a region of insulation in which thermal conduction is reduced or thermal radiation is reflected rather than absorbed by the lower-temperature body.”
Look at the last words there. The exact same mechanism claimed by climate science to “trap heat”, or “prevent heat loss”, or “slow down cooling”, is what IS cooling. Absorption is what you want to avoid to prevent heat loss. How can everyone miss this. I´m starting to think skeptics are as stupid as climate priests.
‘Absorption by the lower-temperature body’, is what needs to be prevented. In the case of the Earth it is heat loss to space which must be prevented, which is what absorption by the atmosphere does.
“In the case of the Earth it is heat loss to space which must be prevented, which is what absorption by the atmosphere does”
And now you need a reference outside of greenhouse-theory to support that. Or did you think you can just make things up?
The atmosphere is an extra heat sink. You would know that if you hade done tour physics.
lifeisthermal May 10, 2017 at 12:08 pm
“In the case of the Earth it is heat loss to space which must be prevented, which is what absorption by the atmosphere does”
And now you need a reference outside of greenhouse-theory to support that. Or did you think you can just make things up?
The atmosphere is an extra heat sink. You would know that if you hade done tour physics.
It appears you have no clue as to what ‘greenhouse-theory’ involves, that you think that ‘heat loss to space’ is somehow ‘outside greenhouse-theory’ is bizarre.
I see some comments about “trapping heat” in regards to methane. Who came up with the stupid idea that absorption of heat is “trapping” it, or even slowing down heat loss. It is the opposite of preventing heat loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_insulation
“Thermal insulation provides a region of insulation in which thermal conduction is reduced or thermal radiation is reflected rather than absorbed by the lower-temperature body.”
Look at the last words there. The exact same mechanism claimed by climate science to “trap heat”, or “prevent heat loss”, or “slow down cooling”, is what IS cooling. Absorption is what you want to avoid to prevent heat loss. How can everyone miss this. I´m starting to think skeptics are as stupid as climate priests.
“Such a “fertilization effect” would be “really surprising,” says Thornton…”
WHAT!? Are you out of your mind? Whales don’t migrate northward into cold water because there’s less food there. Peruvian fisherman didn’t name El Nino because there had never been any fish off the coast, but because fish were NOT found there. Cold water upwelling is like the buffet table for sea life. There is MORE food there. But surprising? No way Jose. Surprising my sweet patootie, mutter, mutter, mutter, well maybe surprising if you’re suffering under some particular delusions or beholden to a particular religious dogma about the impending catastrophic end of the world. But otherwise, no, perfectly sensible, predictable, expected, known to fishermen, marine biologists and cetacean experts for years.
Coastal upwelling is what makes South American Pacific fisheries so productive, leading to the vast sea bird guano deposits mined during the 19th century.
“Good news about climate change is especially rare in the Arctic. But now comes news that increases in one greenhouse gas-methane-lead to the dramatic decline of another.”
Excuse me Mr. Hyman,
but the science is settled. CC is BAD. Please adjust your data accordingly.
That is just so beautiful. Little methane bubbles lifting trace elements from the sea floor to where plants can use them.
No chance a few windmills might do similar, just pumping air down the the sea-floor?
All did you see that, you peeps who see salvation via ‘CO2 fertilisation’, carbon dioxide didn’t do it here.
So no, plants will not belch forth from oceans of sand & rock just because we tease them with a whiff of CO2.
Not that we ourselves should be eating the plants of course, no matter how pretty and lovely they may seem but, they’re still useful things to have around.
It is not the bubbles that cause the upwelling.
Not totally offtopic, according to NOAA’s NSIDC, Arctic sea ice extent yesterday was still higher than on May 8 in 2016 and 2015. Its slower than average melt rate continues, such that soon it might be higher than in 2014 as well.
If 2017 is “sure” to be a new, lower record year, then there will have to be cyclones in late summer, as in the low years of 2007, 2012 and 2016.
Should see if Griff is still up for a bet on that? Last I heard he is still saying this year will be a new low. Looks like all the evidence is for normal to cooler like conditions this summer, albeit starting from fairly low ice conditions from last year.
Ron,
Winter maximum was just slightly below that of recent years, which led to cooler waters, due to heat lost from oceans without more ice cover.
A new record remains a possibility, of course, if yet again there are two Arctic cyclones in late summer, but the way to bet now would be for something between the record low of 2012 and the highs of the past ten years in 2009, 2013 and 2014, which were in the 30-year normal range. The next lowest years were 2007 and 2016, when August cyclones hit, as in 2012.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
You should look at 2006. It is also lower than 2017.
True, but I limited my comments to the past ten years, since the first breakdown in 2007. The prior year ended up well into the normal zone. Maybe 2017 will, too. That would help confirm the bottoming behavior of the past decade.
That is quite a wide range – somewhere between the minimum and maximum of the last 10 years. I will offer a bet based in yours. If it s lower than the 2012 minimum I win, if it is higher than 2009 minimum you win. If it is between nobody wins.
This should be good news for developing NG from methane hydrate deposits. I wonder how long before major advancements are made in this field.
As natural gas from shale becomes a global energy “game changer,” oil and gas researchers are working to develop new technologies to produce natural gas from methane hydrate deposits. This research is important because methane hydrate deposits are believed to be a larger hydrocarbon resource than all of the world’s oil, natural gas and coal resources combined. If these deposits can be efficiently and economically developed, methane hydrate could become the next energy game changer.
http://geology.com/articles/methane-hydrates/
The “IF’s” are huge.
Based on this economic analysis, methane hydrate production would be uneconomic…
?w=500
http://www.mh21japan.gr.jp/english/wp/wp-content/uploads/mh21_182.gif
42-174 JPY/m^3 works out to about $12-$45/mcf… Equivalent to oil prices of $71 to $269/boe.
What do you think?
http://www.m4gw.com/images/2017/GlobalWarming.jpg
Go for it.
Realclearenergy picked up this blog post:
http://www.realclearenergy.org/
That is just too fracking funny. I got the Science article off of Real Clear Science this morning… LOL!
Maybe RCS noticed it because of RCE’s link to here.
I get most of my best material from RCE and RCS… 😉
IMO RC is one of the best news and commentary aggregation sites.
I agree. That’s why I read it everyday. But, invariably there is almost always at least one article worthy of poking fun at, if not outright ridicule, on RCE or RCS.
Although it must have been on RCS first, if that’s where you found the paper.
“Pohlman and his team conclude that the same physical forces that are pushing the methane bubbles up are also pumping nutrient-rich cold waters from the sea bed to the surface, fertilizing phytoplankton blooms that soak up CO2, they write today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
Wow, it’s as if the earth had natural ways of balancing itself out.
Global warming potentials of all ghg which do not condense in the atmosphere (CO2, CH4, O3) are all bogus. Duration in the atmosphere cancels out. Thermalization and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecule energy obviate considerations of absorption cross-section and effectively shift the energy absorbed by CO2 to the lower energy absorb/emit bands of water vapor. The ‘notches’ in top-of-atmosphere measurements demonstrate the validity of this assessment.
The only thing countering the temperature decline that would otherwise be occurring is the increasing trend in water vapor. Average global atmospheric water vapor has been measured and reported by NASA/RSS since 1988 and shows an uptrend of 1.5% per decade. WV has increased about 8% since the more rapid increase began in about 1960. The warmer temperature is welcome but the added WV increases the risk of flooding. IMO all rainwater retaining systems (dams, dykes, etc.) should be upgraded from 100 yr floods to 10,000 yr floods.
They found an unknown unknown.
There are still lots more of them out there to be found.
Keep look 👀 ing.
When you pump that pollution in cant be good. So why are you defending it. Has to mess something up bad.
https://youtu.be/Ji9qSuQapFY
“…But the bigger surprise was that surface water CO2 levels dropped whenever their ship crossed a seep…”
How could this be a “biogeochemist?” Ask even a high school chemistry student, and they’ll tell you that (all other things being equal and at equilibrium of course) CO2 levels will drop as concentrations of another gas (e.g., methane) increase at that location. The only way for the CO2 levels to stay the same (or increase) as methane is added is if the pressure increases. Well surface water is open to the atmosphere, so…
Michael. It is not as obvious as you think. The methane is not dissolved, but in bubbles. They show that the bubble size and concentration would not lead to the observed reduction in CO2 levels. Sometimes when high school chemistry appears to show that the experts are barking up the wrong tree it is because things are a little more complicated.
When we see the nonsense that is distributed by the alarmist warmists A quote from Albert Einstein comes to mind “two things are infinite ,the universe and human stupidity ,and I am not sure about the universe.”
It would impress me if anyone can tell me how methane is produced from burning fossil fuels. I would think the burning would turn the Methane into CO2 and H2O no?
“Most atmospheric methane comes from biological sources—belching bovines and bacteria feasting on decomposing litter—or from the burning of fossil fuels.”
In other methane news, three US Senate RINO votes kept Obama’s idiotic drilling regulations in place:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-blocks-moves-overturn-obama-143841333.html
Science clearly doesn’t matter. Do these fools even know how rapidly methane breaks down in the atmosphere? Or care?
The rule only applies to flaring on Federal leases. The vast majority of the Bakken, where flaring is very prevalent, isn’t on Federal leases.
This rule has very little effect on North Dakota (home of most of the Bakken) because almost all of the production is from State and privately owned leases.
This rule is dumb on two levels:
1. Flared gas is burned.
2. Oil wells that can’t economically be tied into gas pipelines will be shut in.
If the gas was economically recoverable, they wouldn’t be flaring it.
Just more idiotic feel-good gobbledygook to appease the Green Monster.
Gas from federal leases is insignificant in any case.
It has a negative return, or it would already be being captured and sold without government intervention.
From a News search on Methane just now:
Senate votes to keep limits on dangerous methane pollution
Environment America – 2 hours ago
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period when it comes to creating global warming. Thanks to the Obama Administration rule that will now stay on the books, oil and gas operations on public …
Trump’s Reversal Of Obama’s BLM Methane Rule Just Failed In The Senate
The Hayride – 3 hours ago
It failed thanks to three Republicans voting against the overturn of the methane rule, and you can probably guess who the three are: John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins. Thanks to their efforts, there is less incentive to pursue domestic energy.
So the “84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period … blah… blah… blah” bullshit wins the day.