'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice

[ScienceRocks]

'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice
Daily mail ^ | 12.13.2011 | n/a

The Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted a survey of 10,000 square miles of sea off the coast of eastern Siberia. They made a terrifying discovery - huge plumes of methane bubbles rising to the surface from the seabed. 'We found more than 100 fountains, some more than a kilometre across,' said Dr Igor Semiletov, 'These are methane fields on a scale not seen before. The emissions went directly into the atmosphere.'


(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide | Mail Online

 

[Old Rocks]

Climate Change: The Next Generation: Semiletov tells AGU that, if released, 1 percent of ESAS methane could cause runaway warming

Semiletov points out that geologists estimate that the amount of methane stored beneath the Siberian shelf to be on the order of 2,000 gigatons. (Keep in mind that methane is a greenhouse gas 20-times more potent than CO2, and that total carbon emissions today are in the range of eight gigatons a year.) Semiletov thinks that if just 1percent of the ESAS methane is released, it will push total atmospheric methane up to 6 parts per million, and he cites researchers such as David Archer in arguing that this would push us past the point of no return toward runaway global warming.
Leading climatologist James Hansen also gave a talk at the conference, to his usual throng of thousands, about the threat of runaway global warming and the need to phase out coal plants. He happened to mention that the global atmospheric record showed a slight fall-off in methane for 2008, so I asked him if he was less concerned about this particular threat to a stable climate. Hansen said that on the contrary, the paleontological record probably isn’t a good guide to global methane release, because “even though evidence of releases might look like spikes on a plot, they still happened over thousands of years. Human forcings are happening so fast they don’t allow for negative feedbacks.”

 

[Old Rocks]

Looks as if things are going to change even faster than the 'alarmists' have been predicting.

Home

Methane hydrate is frozen solid methane (natural gas) combined with water (ice). It exists on and beneath the sea floor around continental margins. Tiny amounts of the gas can seep out through cracks in the hydrate (frozen lattice).

In the cold Arctic waters and under high pressure, methane hydrate occurs below permafrost, making it stable but particularly vulnerable to global warming, which destabilizes the solid hydrate, releasing methane gas. It is especially vulnerable in the shallow East Siberian Arctic shelf (ESAS), where 90% of Arctic methane hydrates are situated.

Unexpectedly a team of Russian scientists researching Siberian methane emissions have discovered that ESAS hydrates are already venting methane to the atmosphere.

 

[Old Rocks]

A call for immediate action. Useless, of course, except in the context of the scientists being able to state "We told you so".

NGU brochure

Nothing will be done, and we will see all of this happen. The 'tipping point' is passed. As individuals, and as a nation, we need to plan for consequences. That is not going to happen, either. Except for a very few people, none will consider this serious until it is directly affecting them. Even then, many will insist it is 'cyclic' and has nothing to do with the GHGs that we put into the atmosphere.

 

[editec]

'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice
Daily mail ^ | 12.13.2011 | n/a

The Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted a survey of 10,000 square miles of sea off the coast of eastern Siberia. They made a terrifying discovery - huge plumes of methane bubbles rising to the surface from the seabed. 'We found more than 100 fountains, some more than a kilometre across,' said Dr Igor Semiletov, 'These are methane fields on a scale not seen before. The emissions went directly into the atmosphere.'


(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide | Mail Online

Oh merde!

Methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, "fire ice", natural gas hydrate or just gas hydrate, is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice.[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth.[2] The worldwide amounts of methane bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.[3]
Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere, and they occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from depth along geological faults, followed by precipitation, or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. Methane clathrates are also present in deep Antarctic ice cores, and record a history of atmospheric methane concentrations, dating to 800,000 years ago.[4] The ice-core methane clathrate record is a primary source of data for global warming research, along with oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Despite its short atmospheric half life of 7 years, methane has a global warming potential of 62 over 20 years and 21 over 100 years (IPCC, 1996; Berner and Berner, 1996; vanLoon and Duffy, 2000). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Climate scientists such as James E. Hansen hypothesize that methane clathrates in the permafrost regions will be released as a result of global warming, unleashing powerful feedback forces which may cause runaway climate change that cannot be controlled.

Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tonnes of methane being released[32][33][34][35][36] with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal.[37]

source

 

[zzzz]

Too late. Its like stopping a runaway locomotive, once you apply the brakes it is already too late and takes forever to stop.

 

[Old Rocks]

Methane catastrophe

Written some time ago, and, unfortunetly, quite prophetic.

 

[wirebender]

Look out your window and note that the sky is not falling. Apply some lotion to your hands which are undoubtedly raw and chapped from the incessant hand wringing and take a few deep breaths and try to understand that you have been hoaxed.

Do you really believe that the sea bed has never burped methane before? Methane has no more capacity to warm the atmosphere than CO2.

 

[westwall]

Jeez, it didn't happen in the 1930's (when it was warmer) it didn't happen in the MWP (when it was way warmer, and it didn't happen during the RWP (when it was likewise way warmer). I say get a team down there and cap the plumes at their source and start generating some power with it!

 

[RollingThunder]

Look out your window and note that the sky is not falling. Apply some lotion to your hands which are undoubtedly raw and chapped from the incessant hand wringing and take a few deep breaths and try to understand that you have been hoaxed.

Do you really believe that the sea bed has never burped methane before? Methane has no more capacity to warm the atmosphere than CO2.

LOLOLOLOL.....just more retarded anti-science drivel from the forum's resident bogus bloviater and tragic Dunning-Kruger Effect victim.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

"The shelf is shallow, 50 meters or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or above water, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. "

Read more: 'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide | Mail Online

Which can only mean that the SUV is far older than anticipated

 

[earlycuyler]

 

[CrusaderFrank]

If only Western civilization looked like North Korea at night...ahhh, the EnviroMarxists can dream can't they?

 

[RollingThunder]

Jeez, it didn't happen in the 1930's (when it was warmer) it didn't happen in the MWP (when it was way warmer, and it didn't happen during the RWP (when it was likewise way warmer). I say get a team down there and cap the plumes at their source and start generating some power with it!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.....wow, big surprise, the walleyedretard is insanely wrong again...as usual for the poor confused imbecile...

The world was not warmer in the 1930's, but the walleyedretard has fixated on the old news that the continental US (only 2% of the Earth's surface) was a tiny fraction of a degree warmer in 1934 than 1998 compared to the 1951-1980 average. Like two one hundredths of one percent (1934 ~ 1.25ºC vs. 1998 ~ 1.23ºC). The difference is not statistically significant. In the global mean, 2005 remains the warmest year with 2010 in a close tie.

The world was not warmer either during the MWP or the RWP according to the scientific evidence, even though the walleyedretard's denier cult myths say the opposite. The world is warmer than it has ever been in at least the last six thousand years, maybe eight.

Talking about "capping" a multitude of methane plumes each a thousand meters wide just demonstrates how insane and clueless the walleyedretard really is.

 

[RollingThunder]

"The shelf is shallow, 50 meters or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or above water, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. "

Read more: 'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide | Mail Online

Which can only mean that the SUV is far older than anticipated

No, but your moronically drooling posts can only mean that your brain died some time ago and was replaced by some moldy cottage cheese.

 

[Sunshine]

The day the earth farted!

 

[Old Rocks]

Jeez, it didn't happen in the 1930's (when it was warmer) it didn't happen in the MWP (when it was way warmer, and it didn't happen during the RWP (when it was likewise way warmer). I say get a team down there and cap the plumes at their source and start generating some power with it!

10,000 sq. miles. A square one hundred miles on the side. And in this small area, they found over 100 of these plumes. Some exceeding 1/2 mile wide.

If you have a reasonable way of capping this, patent it. It will be a real money maker, and a boon to us all.

However, returning to reality, last year, they were looking at some plumes 100 meters across. And ten years ago, they were measuring methane in solution in the ocean, and the increase in percentage of methane in the air above the oceans. This is releases on an order of magnitude in the space of a year. That is correct, they did not have these plumes in the MWP when it was not warmer than at present. And it was not warmer the world over in the '30's, only in the continental US.

Methane, once it is in the atmosphere, for the first 20 years is over 60 times as effective of a greenhouse gas as CO2. The higher the percentage of methane in the atmosphere, the longer this more effective period lasts. In other words, an addition of 1 ppm would be the equivelant of an increase of over 60 ppm of CO2. Even discounting present methane and other GHG increases, that 1 ppm would push us over the equivelant of 450 ppm of CO2.

Going to be interesting to see what happens in 2012 in this region. A major burp, such as that of the Storega Slide of 8000 years ago could provide us with some real entertainment.

 

[Old Rocks]

The day the earth farted!

Methane Thought To Be Responsible For Mass Extinction

Methane Thought To Be Responsible For Mass Extinction
ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2003) — EVANSTON, Ill. -- What caused the worst mass extinction in Earth's history 251 million years ago? An asteroid or comet colliding with Earth? A greenhouse effect? Volcanic eruptions in Siberia? Or an entirely different culprit? A Northwestern University chemical engineer believes the culprit may be an enormous explosion of methane (natural gas) erupting from the ocean depths.

In an article published in the September issue of Geology, Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical engineering, suggests that huge combustible clouds produced by methane gas trapped in stagnant bodies of water and suddenly released could have killed off the majority of marine life and land animals and plants at the end of the Permian era -- long before dinosaurs lived and died.

The mechanism also might explain other extinctions and climate perturbations (ice ages) and even the Biblical flood, as well as be the cause of future catastrophes.

 

[Sunshine]

Jeez, it didn't happen in the 1930's (when it was warmer) it didn't happen in the MWP (when it was way warmer, and it didn't happen during the RWP (when it was likewise way warmer). I say get a team down there and cap the plumes at their source and start generating some power with it!

10,000 sq. miles. A square one hundred miles on the side. And in this small area, they found over 100 of these plumes. Some exceeding 1/2 mile wide.

If you have a reasonable way of capping this, patent it. It will be a real money maker, and a boon to us all.

However, returning to reality, last year, they were looking at some plumes 100 meters across. And ten years ago, they were measuring methane in solution in the ocean, and the increase in percentage of methane in the air above the oceans. This is releases on an order of magnitude in the space of a year. That is correct, they did not have these plumes in the MWP when it was not warmer than at present. And it was not warmer the world over in the '30's, only in the continental US.

Methane, once it is in the atmosphere, for the first 20 years is over 60 times as effective of a greenhouse gas as CO2. The higher the percentage of methane in the atmosphere, the longer this more effective period lasts. In other words, an addition of 1 ppm would be the equivelant of an increase of over 60 ppm of CO2. Even discounting present methane and other GHG increases, that 1 ppm would push us over the equivelant of 450 ppm of CO2.

Going to be interesting to see what happens in 2012 in this region. A major burp, such as that of the Storega Slide of 8000 years ago could provide us with some real entertainment.

 

[Old Rocks]

"The shelf is shallow, 50 meters or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or above water, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. "

Read more: 'Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide | Mail Online

Which can only mean that the SUV is far older than anticipated

No, but your moronically drooling posts can only mean that your brain died some time ago and was replaced by some moldy cottage cheese.

Now that is disrespect to moldy cottage cheese.