Arctic Methane

[RollingThunder]

Well, we give them articles from real scientists, and their reply is idiocy.

Two possibilities.

1. The deniers on here are very ignorant, very stupid and very brainwashed.

2. The deniers on here are trolls who are getting paid by some stake-holder in the fossil fuel industry (Koch brothers? Exxon? Western Fuels?) to spread misinformation, deceitful propaganda, and lies.

 

[skookerasbil]

The skeptics have no interest in beating the Johnson until it falls off........we come in and blow up the BS opinion based crap from the AGW climate crusaders and we're out. Why do you think all threads posted up by the AGW people in here ( less than a handful by the way ) die in a few days at best? As I pointed out........90% of ocean methane is eaten completely by microbes. Posted a link a couple of pages back.

End of story..........

 

[RollingThunder]

The skeptics have no interest in beating the Johnson until it falls off........we come in and blow up the BS opinion based crap from the AGW climate crusaders and we're out. Why do you think all threads posted up by the AGW people in here ( less than a handful by the way ) die in a few days at best? As I pointed out........90% of ocean methane is eaten completely by microbes. Posted a link a couple of pages back.

More hilariously delusional insanity from the kooky denier cult troll.

 

[Billy_Bob]

The skeptics have no interest in beating the Johnson until it falls off........we come in and blow up the BS opinion based crap from the AGW climate crusaders and we're out. Why do you think all threads posted up by the AGW people in here ( less than a handful by the way ) die in a few days at best? As I pointed out........90% of ocean methane is eaten completely by microbes. Posted a link a couple of pages back.

More hilariously delusional insanity from the kooky denier cult troll.

Funny;

You call names and make insane remarks and all without a sherd of evidence or proof.. You must really like being inside a bubble without oxygen...

 

[RollingThunder]

The skeptics have no interest in beating the Johnson until it falls off........we come in and blow up the BS opinion based crap from the AGW climate crusaders and we're out. Why do you think all threads posted up by the AGW people in here ( less than a handful by the way ) die in a few days at best? As I pointed out........90% of ocean methane is eaten completely by microbes. Posted a link a couple of pages back.

More hilariously delusional insanity from the kooky denier cult troll.

Funny; You call names and make insane remarks and all without a sherd of evidence or proof.. You must really like being inside a bubble without oxygen...

More fallacious bullshit from ol' BoobyBobNutJob. As anyone who has been following these threads gas seen, I post abundant scientific evidence to back up my statements. Whereas ol' BBNJ just spews meaningless hot air without any actual evidence, other than perhaps some un-scientific drivel off some denier cult blog that wouldn't fool a sharp 15 year old.

 

[Billy_Bob]

More fallacious bullshit from ol' BoobyBobNutJob. As anyone who has been following these threads gas seen, I post abundant scientific evidence to back up my statements. Whereas ol' BBNJ just spews meaningless hot air without any actual evidence, other than perhaps some un-scientific drivel off some denier cult blog that wouldn't fool a sharp 15 year old.

Tell me BOY BLUNDER show me the evidence that 120 PPM is responsible for all warming post 1950.... I wanna see your so called proof!

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Old Rocks and Michal Mann identify the exact moment mankind began Global Warming

 

[RollingThunder]

Recent news on this topic that explains the extreme danger these methane releases pose to our world.

Horrific Methane Eruptions in East Siberian Sea
Arctic News
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2014
A catastrophe of unimaginable propertions is unfolding in the Arctic Ocean. Huge quantities of methane are erupting from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea and entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.



As the top image above shows, peak levels as high as 2363 ppb were recorded at an altitude of 19,820 ft (6041 m) on the morning of August 12, 2014. The middle image shows that huge quantities of methane continued to be present over the East Siberian Sea that afternoon, while the bottom image shows that methane levels as high as 2441 ppb were recorded a few days earlier, further indicating that the methane did indeed originate from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea.

On August 12, 2014, peak methane levels at higher altitudes were even higher than the readings mentioned on above image. Levels as high as 2367 ppb were reached at an altitude of 36,850 ft (11,232 m). Such high levels have become possible as the huge quantities of methane that were released from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean over the period from October 2013 to March 2014, have meanwhile descended to lower latitudes where they show up at higher altitudes.

Methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor helped push up mean global methane levels to readings as high as 1832 ppb on August 12, 2014.

Ironically, the methane started to erupt just as an international team of scientists from Sweden, Russia and the U.S. (SWERUS-C3), visiting the Arctic Ocean to measure methane, had ended their research.

Örjan Gustafsson describes part of their work: “Using the mid-water sonar, we mapped out an area of several kilometers where bubbles were filling the water column from depths of 200 to 500 m. During the preceding 48 h we have performed station work in two areas on the shallow shelf with depths of 60-70m where we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites.”

Örjan Gustafsson adds that “a tongue of relatively warm Atlantic water, with a core at depths of 200–600 m may have warmed up some in recent years. As this Atlantic water, the last remnants of the Gulf Stream, propagates eastward along the upper slope of the East Siberian margin, our SWERUS-C3 program is hypothesizing that this heating may lead to destabilization of upper portion of the slope methane hydrates.”

Schematics of key components of the Arctic climate-cryosphere-carbon system that are addressed by the SWE-C3 Program. a,b) Sonar images of gas plumes in the water column caused by sea floor venting of methane (a: slope west of Svalbard, Westbrook et al., 2009; b: ESAO, Shakhova et al., 2010, Science). c) Coastal erosion of organic-rich Yedoma permafrost, Muostoh Island, SE Laptev Sea. d) multibeam image showing pockmarks from gas venting off the East Siberian shelf. e) distribution of Yedoma permafrost in NE Siberia. f) Atmospheric venting of CH4, CO2. (SWERUS-C3)

Örjan Gustafsson further adds that SWERUS-C3 researchers have on earlier expeditions documented extensive venting of methane from the subsea system to the atmosphere over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

In 2010, team members Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov estimated the accumulated methane potential for the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf alone to be as follows:
- organic carbon in permafrost of about 500 Gt;
- about 1000 Gt in hydrate deposits; and
- about 700 Gt in free gas beneath the gas hydrate stability zone.

Back in 2008, Shakhova et al. wrote a paper warning that “we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time.”

Last year, a team of researchers including Professor Peter Wadhams calculated that such a 50 Gt release would cause global damage with a price-tag of $60 trillion.

As Prof Wadhams explains in the video below: “We really have no choice except to seriously consider the use of geoengineering.”



Sea surface temperatures as high as 18.8°C are now recorded at locations where warm water from the Pacific Ocean is threatening to invade the Arctic Ocean.

At the same time, huge amounts of very warm water are carried into the Arctic Ocean by the Gulf Stream through the North Atlantic. The image below illustrates how the Gulf Stream brings very warm water to the edge of the sea ice.

Waters close to Svalbard reached temperatures as high as 62°F (16.4°C) on July 29, 2014 (green circle). Note that the image below shows sea surface temperatures only. At greater depths (say about 300 m), the Gulf Stream is pushing even warmer water through the Greenland Sea than temperatures at the sea surface.

Since the passage west of Svalbard is rather shallow, a lot of this very warm water comes to the surface at that spot, resulting in an anomaly of 11.1°C. The high sea surface temperatures west of Svalbard thus show that the Gulf Stream can carry very warm water (warmer than 16°C) at greater depths and is pushing this underneath the sea ice north of Svalbard. Similarly, warm water from greater depth comes to the surface where the Gulf Stream pushes it against the west coast of Novaya Zemlya.




[ click on image to enlarge ]
As Malcolm Light writes in an earlier post: The West Spitzbergen Current dives under the Arctic ice pack west of Svalbard, continuing as the Yermak Branch (YB on map) into the Nansen Basin, while the Norwegian Current runs along the southern continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, its hottest core zone at 300 metres depth destabilizing the methane hydrates en route to where the Eurasian Basin meets the Laptev Sea, a region of extreme methane hydrate destabilization and methane emissions.

The images below give an impression of the amount of heat transported into the Arctic Ocean.





The image below gives an idea how methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean could unfold over the coming decades. For more on this image, see this post and this page.



As said, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog at climateplan.blogspot.com and as illustrated by the image below.

 

[Old Rocks]

But nothing will be done. The human race is just going to have to ride this one out. And hope the effect is not equal to that of Toba for we humans.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Recent news on this topic that explains the extreme danger these methane releases pose to our world.

Horrific Methane Eruptions in East Siberian Sea
Arctic News
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2014
A catastrophe of unimaginable propertions is unfolding in the Arctic Ocean. Huge quantities of methane are erupting from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea and entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.



As the top image above shows, peak levels as high as 2363 ppb were recorded at an altitude of 19,820 ft (6041 m) on the morning of August 12, 2014. The middle image shows that huge quantities of methane continued to be present over the East Siberian Sea that afternoon, while the bottom image shows that methane levels as high as 2441 ppb were recorded a few days earlier, further indicating that the methane did indeed originate from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea.

On August 12, 2014, peak methane levels at higher altitudes were even higher than the readings mentioned on above image. Levels as high as 2367 ppb were reached at an altitude of 36,850 ft (11,232 m). Such high levels have become possible as the huge quantities of methane that were released from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean over the period from October 2013 to March 2014, have meanwhile descended to lower latitudes where they show up at higher altitudes.

Methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor helped push up mean global methane levels to readings as high as 1832 ppb on August 12, 2014.

Ironically, the methane started to erupt just as an international team of scientists from Sweden, Russia and the U.S. (SWERUS-C3), visiting the Arctic Ocean to measure methane, had ended their research.

Örjan Gustafsson describes part of their work: “Using the mid-water sonar, we mapped out an area of several kilometers where bubbles were filling the water column from depths of 200 to 500 m. During the preceding 48 h we have performed station work in two areas on the shallow shelf with depths of 60-70m where we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites.”

Örjan Gustafsson adds that “a tongue of relatively warm Atlantic water, with a core at depths of 200–600 m may have warmed up some in recent years. As this Atlantic water, the last remnants of the Gulf Stream, propagates eastward along the upper slope of the East Siberian margin, our SWERUS-C3 program is hypothesizing that this heating may lead to destabilization of upper portion of the slope methane hydrates.”

Schematics of key components of the Arctic climate-cryosphere-carbon system that are addressed by the SWE-C3 Program. a,b) Sonar images of gas plumes in the water column caused by sea floor venting of methane (a: slope west of Svalbard, Westbrook et al., 2009; b: ESAO, Shakhova et al., 2010, Science). c) Coastal erosion of organic-rich Yedoma permafrost, Muostoh Island, SE Laptev Sea. d) multibeam image showing pockmarks from gas venting off the East Siberian shelf. e) distribution of Yedoma permafrost in NE Siberia. f) Atmospheric venting of CH4, CO2. (SWERUS-C3)

Örjan Gustafsson further adds that SWERUS-C3 researchers have on earlier expeditions documented extensive venting of methane from the subsea system to the atmosphere over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

In 2010, team members Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov estimated the accumulated methane potential for the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf alone to be as follows:
- organic carbon in permafrost of about 500 Gt;
- about 1000 Gt in hydrate deposits; and
- about 700 Gt in free gas beneath the gas hydrate stability zone.

Back in 2008, Shakhova et al. wrote a paper warning that “we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time.”

Last year, a team of researchers including Professor Peter Wadhams calculated that such a 50 Gt release would cause global damage with a price-tag of $60 trillion.

As Prof Wadhams explains in the video below: “We really have no choice except to seriously consider the use of geoengineering.”



Sea surface temperatures as high as 18.8°C are now recorded at locations where warm water from the Pacific Ocean is threatening to invade the Arctic Ocean.

At the same time, huge amounts of very warm water are carried into the Arctic Ocean by the Gulf Stream through the North Atlantic. The image below illustrates how the Gulf Stream brings very warm water to the edge of the sea ice.

Waters close to Svalbard reached temperatures as high as 62°F (16.4°C) on July 29, 2014 (green circle). Note that the image below shows sea surface temperatures only. At greater depths (say about 300 m), the Gulf Stream is pushing even warmer water through the Greenland Sea than temperatures at the sea surface.

Since the passage west of Svalbard is rather shallow, a lot of this very warm water comes to the surface at that spot, resulting in an anomaly of 11.1°C. The high sea surface temperatures west of Svalbard thus show that the Gulf Stream can carry very warm water (warmer than 16°C) at greater depths and is pushing this underneath the sea ice north of Svalbard. Similarly, warm water from greater depth comes to the surface where the Gulf Stream pushes it against the west coast of Novaya Zemlya.




[ click on image to enlarge ]
As Malcolm Light writes in an earlier post: The West Spitzbergen Current dives under the Arctic ice pack west of Svalbard, continuing as the Yermak Branch (YB on map) into the Nansen Basin, while the Norwegian Current runs along the southern continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, its hottest core zone at 300 metres depth destabilizing the methane hydrates en route to where the Eurasian Basin meets the Laptev Sea, a region of extreme methane hydrate destabilization and methane emissions.

The images below give an impression of the amount of heat transported into the Arctic Ocean.





The image below gives an idea how methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean could unfold over the coming decades. For more on this image, see this post and this page.



As said, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog at climateplan.blogspot.com and as illustrated by the image below.

Oceanic turnover...

Happens every few decades. Sinks ships.. Kills fish... but in the Earths atmosphere has little to no effect. Hell the Bermuda triangle has these events every 5-10 years and is accompanied by magnetic interference.

All I can do is laugh at the alarmists who are not happy unless something MAN CAUSED is killing us and needs URGENT DEALING WITH by taking YOUR MONEY and FREEDOMS....

FUCKING MORONS!

 

[RollingThunder]

Recent news on this topic that explains the extreme danger these methane releases pose to our world.

Horrific Methane Eruptions in East Siberian Sea
Arctic News
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2014
A catastrophe of unimaginable propertions is unfolding in the Arctic Ocean. Huge quantities of methane are erupting from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea and entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.



As the top image above shows, peak levels as high as 2363 ppb were recorded at an altitude of 19,820 ft (6041 m) on the morning of August 12, 2014. The middle image shows that huge quantities of methane continued to be present over the East Siberian Sea that afternoon, while the bottom image shows that methane levels as high as 2441 ppb were recorded a few days earlier, further indicating that the methane did indeed originate from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea.

On August 12, 2014, peak methane levels at higher altitudes were even higher than the readings mentioned on above image. Levels as high as 2367 ppb were reached at an altitude of 36,850 ft (11,232 m). Such high levels have become possible as the huge quantities of methane that were released from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean over the period from October 2013 to March 2014, have meanwhile descended to lower latitudes where they show up at higher altitudes.

Methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor helped push up mean global methane levels to readings as high as 1832 ppb on August 12, 2014.

Ironically, the methane started to erupt just as an international team of scientists from Sweden, Russia and the U.S. (SWERUS-C3), visiting the Arctic Ocean to measure methane, had ended their research.

Örjan Gustafsson describes part of their work: “Using the mid-water sonar, we mapped out an area of several kilometers where bubbles were filling the water column from depths of 200 to 500 m. During the preceding 48 h we have performed station work in two areas on the shallow shelf with depths of 60-70m where we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites.”

Örjan Gustafsson adds that “a tongue of relatively warm Atlantic water, with a core at depths of 200–600 m may have warmed up some in recent years. As this Atlantic water, the last remnants of the Gulf Stream, propagates eastward along the upper slope of the East Siberian margin, our SWERUS-C3 program is hypothesizing that this heating may lead to destabilization of upper portion of the slope methane hydrates.”

Schematics of key components of the Arctic climate-cryosphere-carbon system that are addressed by the SWE-C3 Program. a,b) Sonar images of gas plumes in the water column caused by sea floor venting of methane (a: slope west of Svalbard, Westbrook et al., 2009; b: ESAO, Shakhova et al., 2010, Science). c) Coastal erosion of organic-rich Yedoma permafrost, Muostoh Island, SE Laptev Sea. d) multibeam image showing pockmarks from gas venting off the East Siberian shelf. e) distribution of Yedoma permafrost in NE Siberia. f) Atmospheric venting of CH4, CO2. (SWERUS-C3)

Örjan Gustafsson further adds that SWERUS-C3 researchers have on earlier expeditions documented extensive venting of methane from the subsea system to the atmosphere over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

In 2010, team members Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov estimated the accumulated methane potential for the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf alone to be as follows:
- organic carbon in permafrost of about 500 Gt;
- about 1000 Gt in hydrate deposits; and
- about 700 Gt in free gas beneath the gas hydrate stability zone.

Back in 2008, Shakhova et al. wrote a paper warning that “we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time.”

Last year, a team of researchers including Professor Peter Wadhams calculated that such a 50 Gt release would cause global damage with a price-tag of $60 trillion.

As Prof Wadhams explains in the video below: “We really have no choice except to seriously consider the use of geoengineering.”



Sea surface temperatures as high as 18.8°C are now recorded at locations where warm water from the Pacific Ocean is threatening to invade the Arctic Ocean.

At the same time, huge amounts of very warm water are carried into the Arctic Ocean by the Gulf Stream through the North Atlantic. The image below illustrates how the Gulf Stream brings very warm water to the edge of the sea ice.

Waters close to Svalbard reached temperatures as high as 62°F (16.4°C) on July 29, 2014 (green circle). Note that the image below shows sea surface temperatures only. At greater depths (say about 300 m), the Gulf Stream is pushing even warmer water through the Greenland Sea than temperatures at the sea surface.

Since the passage west of Svalbard is rather shallow, a lot of this very warm water comes to the surface at that spot, resulting in an anomaly of 11.1°C. The high sea surface temperatures west of Svalbard thus show that the Gulf Stream can carry very warm water (warmer than 16°C) at greater depths and is pushing this underneath the sea ice north of Svalbard. Similarly, warm water from greater depth comes to the surface where the Gulf Stream pushes it against the west coast of Novaya Zemlya.




[ click on image to enlarge ]
As Malcolm Light writes in an earlier post: The West Spitzbergen Current dives under the Arctic ice pack west of Svalbard, continuing as the Yermak Branch (YB on map) into the Nansen Basin, while the Norwegian Current runs along the southern continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, its hottest core zone at 300 metres depth destabilizing the methane hydrates en route to where the Eurasian Basin meets the Laptev Sea, a region of extreme methane hydrate destabilization and methane emissions.

The images below give an impression of the amount of heat transported into the Arctic Ocean.





The image below gives an idea how methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean could unfold over the coming decades. For more on this image, see this post and this page.



As said, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog at climateplan.blogspot.com and as illustrated by the image below.

Oceanic turnover...Happens every few decades. Sinks ships.. Kills fish... but in the Earths atmosphere has little to no effect. Hell the Bermuda triangle has these events every 5-10 years and is accompanied by magnetic interference. All I can do is laugh at the alarmists who are not happy unless something MAN CAUSED is killing us and needs URGENT DEALING WITH by taking YOUR MONEY and FREEDOMS....FUCKING MORONS!

More retarded drivel that ol' BoobyBobNutJob just pulled out of his ass.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The AGWCult is so gullible

 

[RollingThunder]

The AGWCult is so gullible

LOLOLOL......riiiiiiight....'cause trusting the almost unanimous testimony of the world's scientists is such a sure sign of gullibility......LOLOLOL......you crackpot reality deniers are sooooo insane.....

 

[HenryBHough]

Let's stop the undersea volcanoes!

What???

A simple executive order can't make all that "right"????

C'mon liberals, demand Your (once) New Messiah show what He can do wif His (Royal) Pen and wif His (Imperial) 'phone!

 

[RollingThunder]

Let's stop the undersea volcanoes!

What??? A simple executive order can't make all that "right"???? C'mon liberals, demand Your (once) New Messiah show what He can do wif His (Royal) Pen and wif His (Imperial) 'phone!

A good portrait of two clueless retards spewing moronic drivel. Utterly meaningless.

 

[SSDD]

Still waiting for an aster to my straight forward question....what's the matter warmers, cat got your tongues? Why didn't the "methane bomb" go off during the MWP, or the RWP, or the Holocene maximum...and if they did, why didn't they result in the same sort of climate catastrophe that you are waving your hands about today?

 

[RollingThunder]

Still waiting for an aster to my straight forward question....what's the matter warmers, cat got your tongues? Why didn't the "methane bomb" go off during the MWP, or the RWP, or the Holocene maximum...and if they did, why didn't they result in the same sort of climate catastrophe that you are waving your hands about today?

There's no answering idiotic questions based on fallacious denier cult myths. In the real world, there is good evidence that the Arctic hasn't been as hot as it is getting now in at least the last 44,000 years, but probably more than 120,000 years, back in the previous interglacial period.

Arctic Warming Unprecedented in Last 44,000 Years
Moss and other indicators suggest the current Arctic meltdown is unique in recent geologic history
Scientific American
By Christa Marshall
October 24, 2013
Scientists have long known that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe, even as they had less of a grasp of how recent trends compare to thousands of years ago.

Now, a new study aims to fill the knowledge gap by concluding that recent summer warming in the eastern Canadian Arctic is unprecedented in more than 44,000 years. Prior research documented melt and temperature dynamics going back about 2,000 to 4,000 years in comparison, said study lead author Gifford Miller, associate director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The findings, published online in Geophysical Research Letters this week, counter the conclusions of some prior studies suggesting that natural forces -- along with greenhouse gases -- may be contributing to some of the extensive Arctic warming. The study also suggests that climate models are underestimating Arctic changes, as their past predictions were off by more than 2 degrees Celsius.

"Our study pushes the clock way back," said Scott Lehman, a research professor at the institute and co-author of the paper.

The scientists concluded that the level of warming now matches or goes beyond what occurred during a natural warm period about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum. The study provides the first "direct" evidence that Canadian Arctic temperatures in the last century exceeded the peak warmth of that earlier thermal maximum, the scientists said.

Discovery linked to ancient vegetation

The fact that certain ice caps did not melt during the Holocene Thermal Maximum, despite the extreme warmth at the time, suggests that today's unusual warming period can only be caused by greenhouse gases, Miller said.

"Nothing else out there can explain it," Miller said. Based on the Earth's current position in relation to the sun, the region should be cooling in the summer, not warming, he said.

The scientists benefited from a discovery of vegetation on Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. When ice caps receded on the island in recent decades, they revealed mosses long entombed in the ice.

The mosses became exposed recently, in the past year or so. A longer period would have eroded or blown them away, according to the study. Therefore, the scientists determined that the last time the vegetation appeared was during melting of the ice caps.

Via radiocarbon dating of 365 vegetation samples, they determined that some of the newly exposed mosses from four of the ice caps were at least 40,000 years old. "We never expected to find plants that old," Miller said.

Their old age means that the ice caps entombing them had not melted for at least that long, staying colder than the present day through the peak warmth of the Holocene thermal maximum.

During that time, about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, the eastern Canadian Arctic was closer to the sun in the summer than now, because of natural variabilities in Earth's orbit. The amount of solar radiation hitting the area was about 9 percent higher than now.

Some of the tested vegetation samples were younger, indicating that their ice cap resting places on Baffin Island melted during the peak Holocene warmth 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. However, the melted caps were very close to the ones that remained intact for at least 44,000 years, Miller said.

Are models underestimating warming?

"Those ice caps that didn't melt, you can throw a stone at a slightly lower ice cap that did melt. They are all mixed in together," Miller said. That means that average summer temperatures now are unprecedented in the region in comparison to the past 44,000 years, the study said. The scientists studied 110 ice caps on Baffin Island in total.

Via analysis of the snow-line elevation in the region -- a measure strongly tied to temperature -- the scientists also concluded that summer cooling occurring in Arctic Canada after the peak heat of the Holocene was much greater than predicted by climate models.

As natural variations in Earth's orbit cooled the region between 5,000 years ago and 100 years ago, summer temperatures declined by about 2.7 degrees Celsius, about twice the level predicted by global climate models known as Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5).

The discrepancy between the data and the models indicates that scientists also may be underestimating how much the region will warm in the future, Miller said. Many models suggest that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free by the end of the century, for example, while some scientists say that the ice-free threshold could be reached much sooner (ClimateWire, July 16).

Early results from additional vegetation samples gathered from sites in Greenland and Norway indicate a similar warming trend, Lehman said.

The findings are a "big deal" for showing that current temperatures are higher than the Holocene maximum, even though solar forcing was greater back then, said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who did not participate in the study.

David Pompeani, a paleoclimateologist and doctorate candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, added that the study's strength was the number of samples and the extensiveness of the radiocarbon dating. "That is the real big kicker for me," he said.

 

[skookerasbil]

methane is gay

microbes ftmfw!!!

 

[Old Rocks]

Still waiting for an aster to my straight forward question....what's the matter warmers, cat got your tongues? Why didn't the "methane bomb" go off during the MWP, or the RWP, or the Holocene maximum...and if they did, why didn't they result in the same sort of climate catastrophe that you are waving your hands about today?

Dumb ass, it has been many millions of years since we had the level of CO2 and other GHGs in the atmosphere that we have today. That means that the warming, which is already greater than either of those periods, will continue to increase rapidly.

 

[SSDD]

Still waiting for an aster to my straight forward question....what's the matter warmers, cat got your tongues? Why didn't the "methane bomb" go off during the MWP, or the RWP, or the Holocene maximum...and if they did, why didn't they result in the same sort of climate catastrophe that you are waving your hands about today?

Dumb ass, it has been many millions of years since we had the level of CO2 and other GHGs in the atmosphere that we have today. That means that the warming, which is already greater than either of those periods, will continue to increase rapidly.

Dodge....I am asking why the disaster you are predicting didn't happen during the Holocene Maximum, the RWP, or the MWP when temperatures in the Arctic were warmer than today. And the warming you claim is only in models...not out here in the real world. m it hasn't warmed for two decades now and may be getting slightly cooler if you can get past the data tampering.