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

[konradv]

Global warming fractured the bottom of the Arctic Ocean?

Yeah, that's the part I find hard to believe. The water there is slightly less than 32 degrees 365 days a year. How does that melt these methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean?

Doesn't need to melt, as methane hydrates aren't really frozen. A lowering of pressure can cause methane release, which is what would happen, if the upper layers warmed and the water became less dense.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Global warming fractured the bottom of the Arctic Ocean?

Yeah, that's the part I find hard to believe. The water there is slightly less than 32 degrees 365 days a year. How does that melt these methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean?

"We did it"......Liberal logic.

 

[waltky]

Now, for some appropriate mood music...

The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)
by Manfred Mann

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn

Everybody's building ships and boats
Some are building monuments, others are jotting down notes
Everybody's in despair, every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Everybody's gonna jump for joy

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn

I like to go just like the rest, I like my sugar sweet
But jumping queues and makin' haste, just ain't my cup of meat
Everyone's beneath the trees, feedin' pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
All the pigeons gonna run to him

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn

Let me do what I wanna do, I can't decide 'em all
Just tell me where to put 'em and I'll tell you who to call
Nobody can get no sleep, there's someone on everyone's toes
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Everybody's gonna wanna doze

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn

Manfred Mann song lyrics :: Mighty Quinn lyrics

 

[bripat9643]

You are still proving yourself to be a stupid ass, Pattycake. Yes, the ozone 'hole' was proven to be something new, and it was proven that the chemical reactions at that altitude from the flourocarbons were the problem. In fact, a Nobel prize was awarded to the chemist that supplied the proof.

No, it wasn't proven to be something new, turd. The Ozone hole has probably always been at the South Pole because it doesn't get any sunlight for six months. Ozone is created when sunlight strikes Oxygen, if you didn't know that. If you think there was proof the ozone hole wasn't always there, then produce it.

Of course, you could have researched to see how far back this has been monitored, and what was found then. But that would be a little like work, and you would just rather flap yap.

If you have proof, then produce it. Otherwise shut your yap.

Your opinion, based in willfull ignorance is irrelevant, in any case.

It appears your opinion is based on "willful ignorance."

 

[bripat9643]

Global warming fractured the bottom of the Arctic Ocean?

Yeah, that's the part I find hard to believe. The water there is slightly less than 32 degrees 365 days a year. How does that melt these methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean?

Doesn't need to melt, as methane hydrates aren't really frozen. A lowering of pressure can cause methane release, which is what would happen, if the upper layers warmed and the water became less dense.

Uh . . . . That might lower the pressure by 0.00001%. The water at the surface is 32 degrees year round.

 

[bripat9643]

'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

There's no video evidence at the link.

so excuse me for finding it hard to buy that it's only occurring there.

Hmmm..... The outgassing was spotted by satellite. And were it occuring in other oceans, we would see that also. And, as stated by the scientists that were on the ship that was put out on an emergency basis, these findings were in just an area 100 by 100 miles. They stated that they saw no reason that the rest of the shelf was not doing the same.

If it were to be occurring at this scale in other oceans, then it is game over. Runaway climate change. That does not mean Venus, what it does mean is that we cannot affect the scope, or extant of the change. A repeat of conditions in the PETM, possibly worse. With seven billion people on the planet. A sad kind of population control.

Oh puhleaze. Other oceans are far warmer than the arctic ocean, but you expect us to believe that only now the methane hydrates in these other oceans are decomposing? There are methane hydrates all over the Caribbean. The water temp there is far warmer than the arctic. How can there still be Methane hydrate in the Caribbean if a water temperature of 32 degrees at the surface is sufficient to make them decompose?

The warmist cult members were looking for a way to scare the voters into giving them control over our lives and tax us into the Stone Age, and this is just their latest attempt.

Note: They are still claiming the arctic will be ice free in a few years even though ice in the arctic has been increasing for the last 7 years.

The warmist cult members have been wrong about every claim they have made. Anyone who falls for their latest scam is terminally gullible.

 

[saveliberty]

These guys would really freak if they studied gamma rays. lol

 

[westwall]

So if the methane comes from the bottom of the sea, What difference does ice make? Wouldn't the gas just find its way to the edges of the ice? Also, humans didn't create the methane. The Earth released it.

What these methane heads have failed to show is that this methane release hasn't been going on all along. Just because some government funded expedition finds something, that doesn't mean it's a new phenomena.

This reminds me of the ozone hole. No one ever bothered to prove that was something new either. They just assumed it. Yet, we all had to give up using fluorocarbons in our air conditioners.

You are still proving yourself to be a stupid ass, Pattycake. Yes, the ozone 'hole' was proven to be something new, and it was proven that the chemical reactions at that altitude from the flourocarbons were the problem. In fact, a Nobel prize was awarded to the chemist that supplied the proof.

Of course, you could have researched to see how far back this has been monitored, and what was found then. But that would be a little like work, and you would just rather flap yap.

Your opinion, based in willfull ignorance is irrelevant, in any case.

Oh, really now. Please provide the peer reviewed papers that showed it was a recent phenomena. I have plenty that show it is entirely natural.

 

[westwall]

'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

There's no video evidence at the link.

so excuse me for finding it hard to buy that it's only occurring there.

Hmmm..... The outgassing was spotted by satellite. And were it occuring in other oceans, we would see that also. And, as stated by the scientists that were on the ship that was put out on an emergency basis, these findings were in just an area 100 by 100 miles. They stated that they saw no reason that the rest of the shelf was not doing the same.

If it were to be occurring at this scale in other oceans, then it is game over. Runaway climate change. That does not mean Venus, what it does mean is that we cannot affect the scope, or extant of the change. A repeat of conditions in the PETM, possibly worse. With seven billion people on the planet. A sad kind of population control.

Actually, I think a major flu outbreak or an attack of hemorrhagic fever would be worse. Starvation sure is a crappy way to go too, of course when it's warmer plant life blooms so you can't pray for famine to kill people, no matter how hard you try to pin that on AGW.

 

[westwall]

Home

Professor Peter Wadhams, on behalf of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, spoke about this critical issue at the December 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, USA. Key elements of his talk have been widely reported, following an article in the UK's Independent newspaper. (Please find copies of this and subsequent articles attached.)

The substance of our concerns – and the basis for these media reports – is outlined in the attached 16-page document entitled Arctic Methane Alert. To summarise:

• The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and increased warming of the Arctic seas threaten methane hydrate instability and a massive catastrophic release of methane into the atmosphere, as noted in IPCC AR4.

• Research published by N. Shakhova* shows that methane is already venting into the atmosphere from seabed methane hydrates on the East Siberian Arctic shelf, or ESAS (the world's largest continental shelf), which, if allowed to escalate, would likely lead to abrupt and catastrophic global warming.

• The latest research expedition to the region (September/October 2011), according to Professor I. Semiletov, witnessed methane plumes on a "fantastic scale," "some one kilometer in diameter," "far greater" than previous observations, which were officially reported in 2010 to equal methane emissions from all the other oceans put together.

• The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and subsequent increased Arctic surface warming will inevitably increase the rate of methane emissions already being released from Arctic wetlands and thawing permafrost.

• The latest available data indicates there is a 5-10% possibility of the Arctic being ice free in September by 2013, more likely 2015, and with 95% confidence by 2018. This, according to the recognised world authorities on Arctic sea ice, Prof. Wadhams and Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski, is the point of no return for summer sea ice. Once past this point, it could prove impossible to reverse the retreat by any kind of intervention. The data indicate the Arctic could be ice free for six months of the year by 2020 (PIOMAS 2011).

Home

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8U0HxhR2Bc&feature=related]Woman farts in pool!! - YouTube[/ame]

 

[skookerasbil]

meh.......the "predictions" record by those in the alarmist camps has been abysmal, in fact, all these predictions and pronunciations of "this computer model says" and "that computer model says" are looked at by the public as a joke in 2011. Its not even debatable.

IN 2011, when the public see's news reports about this crap being tied to global warming, they are laughing their balls off.

How do I know with 100% certainty?


>>>>>>>>>>>>Delivering the post mortem on climate legislation’s failure …


HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

[westwall]

meh.......the "predictions" record by those in the alarmist camps has been abysmal, in fact, all these predictions and pronunciations of "this computer model says" and "that computer model says" are looked at by the public as a joke in 2011. Its not even debatable.

IN 2011, when the public see's news reports about this crap being tied to global warming, they are laughing their balls off.

How do I know with 100% certainty?


>>>>>>>>>>>>Delivering the post mortem on climate legislation’s failure …


HAPPY NEW YEAR

My gosh but they DO whine don't they? Worse then my 5 year old girl. I expect their next response to be "fine I'm going to go play by myself now!"

 

[Old Rocks]

Yeah, that's the part I find hard to believe. The water there is slightly less than 32 degrees 365 days a year. How does that melt these methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean?

Doesn't need to melt, as methane hydrates aren't really frozen. A lowering of pressure can cause methane release, which is what would happen, if the upper layers warmed and the water became less dense.

Uh . . . . That might lower the pressure by 0.00001%. The water at the surface is 32 degrees year round.

Just about a dumb fuck, aren't you, Pattycake.

Arctic Report Card - Ocean - Proshutinsky, et al.

Ocean temperature and salinity
Upper-ocean temperature

Upper ocean temperature anomalies in summer 2010 (Fig. SIO7 were comparable to those in 2009 (not shown) but remained lower than the record set in 2007, with no significant inter-annual changes in summer warming since 2008. In August 2011, there is a wide area of anomalously warm SSTs (sea surface temperature) in the western Arctic Ocean (north of NW Canada, Alaska and eastern Siberia), although maximum values do not reach those seen in 2007 (Fig. SIO7). Much of the eastern Arctic Ocean (north of western Russia and Europe) is also anomalously warm, with the exception of Fram Strait. For more information about water temperatures in Fram Strait, and the adjacent Greenland and Norwegian seas, see the essay on Cetaceans and Pinnipeds.

Inter-annual variations in SST anomalies reflect differences in the pace of sea ice retreat (see the essay on Sea Ice), as well as changing advection of warm ocean currents from the south (Steele et al. 2011). In recent years, solar radiation has penetrated more easily into the upper ocean under thinning and retreating ice cover to create warm near-surface temperature maxima (Jackson et al., 2010). In the Canada Basin, this maximum has descended to depths around 30 m because of increased downwelling in the convergent Beaufort Gyre during recent strongly-anticyclonic years (Yang et al. 2009), while surface mixing is decreasing as stratification increases (Toole et al. 2010; McPhee et al. 2009). Outside of the Beaufort Gyre, the temperature maximum does not survive through the winter (Steele et al. 2010).

 

[Old Rocks]

Home

Methane hydrate seems intrinsically vulnerable on Earth; nowhere at the Earth's surface is it stable to melting and release of the methane, and it floats in water, so the only factor holding it at high pressure is the weight of the mud overlying it in coastal margin sediments. A few degrees of warming in the deep ocean can have a significant impact on the stability of the hydrate, and it is known that the temperature of the deep ocean responds to changes in surface climate, albeit with a lag of centuries to millennia. Hence, there are concerns that climate change could trigger significant methane releases from hydrates and thus could lead to strong positive carbon–climate feedbacks (Schiermeier 2008).*David Archer 09 Gas hydrates: entrance to a methane age or climate threat?


Global warming through ocean warming will, when the sea floor is warmed upo enough destabilize methane hydrates releasing methane gas. The feedback is shown by a 2006 global warming assessment for the German government .

It is estimated that if 10% of methane stored in permafrost was released into the atmopshere, it would have an effect similar to a ten-fold increase in CO2. Abrupt warming would occur if the concentration of methane, or CO2, increased suddenly; this would in turn cause further melting of permafrost and release of even more ancient methane deposits ; and therefore it would intensify global warming even further. This phenomenon is known as a ‘positive feedback’. Even if methane accumulates with a slower pace it will still intensify global warming by oxidizing to CO2 which is a less potent greenhouse gas but with a much longer lifetime of 230 years.

Although as far back as 1992*(USGS) the threat of an enormous global climate change impact from marine methane hydrates destabilized from global arming was recognized. The scenario is sea level rise with ocean warming from which it has been assumed that it will take hundreds of years for global surface warming to penetrate down to the sea floor and below to destabilize the solid hydrates.

Methane gas has 160X the volume of the solid hydrate containin it, and therefor methane hydrate destabilization will tend to be explosive - on large por small. An MIT model *has found this effect and it has been suggested that this property makes the hydrates more vulnerable to warming because destabilization could be self propagating. "This indicates that we may be greatly underestimating the methane fluxes presently occurring in the ocean and from underground into Earth's atmosphere," Ruban Juanes 09 MT energy research

 

[Old Rocks]

Home

NASA has given methane more attention so is a good source of information for example NASA's*Methane
a Scientific Journey by Gavin Schmidt.

Methane is very important because it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. The figure usually quoted for methane global warming potential is 25 (XCO2), but this defers the global warming of methane over 100 years and was more a policy decison than science. The IPCC gives methane's GWP over 20 years at 72. Methane lasts in the atmopshere about 10 years over which time the GWP is at least 100. That matters in the Arctic methane emergency where we need to know what the global warming effect of methane over the very short term.


Methane only lasts 10 years because (unlike CO2) it is chemically reactive inthe atmosphere. It is oxidized
by atmospheric hydroxyl, but to other GHGs notably water vapor vapor and CO2 so methane emissions cary on warming (to a small degree) long after 10 years. The IPCC accounts for the water vapor warming of methane emissions but not the CO2. The atmospheric chemistry of methane in the atmsphere is very hard to pin down. Drew Shindell of NASA is a leading world expert on that aspect of methane.

Because methane is removed from the atmosphere by hydroxyl, a very large constant emission can use up the hydroxyl thereby allowing methane to last longer inthe atmosphere.

Dr Shindell has determined by modeling methane in the atmosphere that its global warming potential (GWP) is up to 30% higher than assumed.

 

[Mr. H.]

Can we increase the hydroxyl in the atmosphere?

 

[Old Rocks]

Home

At the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco from 5-9 December 2011, there was a session on Arctic Gas Hydrate Methane Release and Climate Change at which Dr Semiletov of the Far Eastern branch of Russian Academy of Sciences reported dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – were seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

This has been reported by UK The Independent and copied by news around the world and in a number of online blogs, but the background is explained in detail by a website set up by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group. Essentially the problem they have identified is the following:

This emergency to our planet's biosphere comes from multiple positive Arctic climate feedback processes, each of which affects the whole biosphere and each of which will increase the rate of global warming / temperature increase. Atmospheric temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic than in temperate or tropical regions.

Already today, all the potentially huge Arctic positive climate feedbacks are operating.
The Arctic summer sea ice is in a rapid, extremely dangerous meltdown process. The Arctic summer ice albedo loss feedback (i.e. open sea absorbs more heat than ice which reflects much of it) had clearly passed its tipping point in 2007 – many decades earlier than models projected, meaning that it is now inevitable that the Arctic will become ice free in summer within the next few years. Models of sea ice volume indicate a seasonally ice free Arctic likely by 2015, with the possibility of a collapse to a small amount of residual ice as soon as summer 2013.

*Such a collapse will inexorably lead to positive feedbacks under which today's carbon sinks such as permafrost, peat bogs, and rainforests worldwide will become net sources of atmospheric carbon leading to planetary catastrophe.

The retreat of sea ice is leading to the most catastrophic feedback process of all, many decades ahead of projections. This is the venting of methane to the atmosphere from frozen methane gas hydrates that are destabilizing along the East Siberian continental shelf in the Arctic.

 

[Old Rocks]

Can we increase the hydroxyl in the atmosphere?

That and other remedies are discussed at the site given for the posts.

All most all of the scientists that deal with the Arctic are very serious about the September observations of the methane emissions in the East Arctic Shelf. This was not expected at all.

The first expeditions checking the clathrates and other issues in the Arctic Ocean was done in 2003. They found elevated CH4 in the ocean, and elevated amounts in the atmosphere above the ocean. These increased until in 2010, they observed what they called 'torches', streams of methane bubbles breaking surface and going directly into the atmosphere. Some of these were tens of meters across.

But in Sept of 2011, in an area only 100 miles by 100 miles, they found over 100 'torches', some over a kilometer in diameter. According to Dr. Semiletov, there were probably tens of thousands of these 'torches' spread over the whole of the shelf. Most of the shelf is 50 meters or less in depth. And the temperatures of the water has been increasing every year, and the increased storms are mixing it more than in the past.

Simply, worst case scenerios were calling for this to happen toward the end of the century, not this year. The climate scientists are wrong again, they were far too optimistic about the time we had left to deal with the feedbacks in the Arctic.

 

[Intense]

Can we increase the hydroxyl in the atmosphere?

That and other remedies are discussed at the site given for the posts.

All most all of the scientists that deal with the Arctic are very serious about the September observations of the methane emissions in the East Arctic Shelf. This was not expected at all.

The first expeditions checking the clathrates and other issues in the Arctic Ocean was done in 2003. They found elevated CH4 in the ocean, and elevated amounts in the atmosphere above the ocean. These increased until in 2010, they observed what they called 'torches', streams of methane bubbles breaking surface and going directly into the atmosphere. Some of these were tens of meters across.

But in Sept of 2011, in an area only 100 miles by 100 miles, they found over 100 'torches', some over a kilometer in diameter. According to Dr. Semiletov, there were probably tens of thousands of these 'torches' spread over the whole of the shelf. Most of the shelf is 50 meters or less in depth. And the temperatures of the water has been increasing every year, and the increased storms are mixing it more than in the past.

Simply, worst case scenerios were calling for this to happen toward the end of the century, not this year. The climate scientists are wrong again, they were far too optimistic about the time we had left to deal with the feedbacks in the Arctic.

Maybe we should stop whining about it and try to capture it, or would you complain about that too?

 

[Old Rocks]

Can we increase the hydroxyl in the atmosphere?

Should the governments actually decide to address the issue, people in your business will be in demand. For, somehow, that leaking methane needs be prevented from exiting into the atmosphere unburned. And, should we decide to do this, then we should at least get something back for the effort.

However, given we are talking about costs on the order of WW3, it is not going to happen. And, since governments are not going to do anything, we, as individuals, will have to deal with the consequences of runaway warming on an individual level.