This is not good.

[skierinvermont]

You posted images of warming at 300m-400m when in reality your warming area is some of the deepest areas in the arctic that is his point.

Lol somebody gets it! Too bad Vergent is too busy insulting me and pretending to be smart to use his brain and read.

[skierinvermont]

It accumulates in the middle, then it spreads out.

Significantly warmed 2-3C water has already reaches the continental shelves of Greenland, Siberia, the CA, and there is a patch on the Scandinavian CS. While the worst of it is still a ways off, the warming has already begun.

I'm glad you're finally on board Vergent and reading my posts. Can you offer some proof for these two claims? Can you provide a link for the maps you are using or provide maps for the 100m and 200m depths which I assume cover the ESB and Laptev? (the 300 and 400m ones do not since the ESB and Laptev are barely 300m deep, less in some places).

The maps you use look cold around the edges where the ocean is shallower.

It's possible that the stratification and currents of the arctic ocean keep the warm Atlantic influxes separate from the waters of the ESB and Laptev, or that the water cools off enough before reaching there. So show us some evidence of warming in those areas.

[Vergent]

Lol somebody gets it! Too bad Vergent is too busy insulting me and pretending to be smart to use his brain and read.

Skier,

Are you blind, while the warmest is in the middle, the warming reaches vast expanses of the continental shelves. Go back to the stability graph. 2C will destablize hydrates at this depth.

[skierinvermont]

Skier,

Are you blind, while the warmest is in the middle, the warming reaches vast expanses of the continental shelves. Go back to the stability graph. 2C will destablize hydrates at this depth.

The maps you posted don't cover any of the continental shelves. Maybe a little bit of the CA, but the waters off the CA are 500m+ deep and the warming at 300 and 400m is fairly moderate.

How about posting some 200m maps that include the continental shelves or providing us the link so we can check ourselves?

(Third time I've asked!)

[Vergent]

The maps you posted don't cover any of the continental shelves. Maybe a little bit of the CA, but the waters off the CA are 500m+ deep and the warming at 300 and 400m is fairly moderate.

How about posting some 200m maps that include the continental shelves or providing us the link so we can check ourselves?

(Third time I've asked!)

The white area is the continental shelf at this depth. The shallower depths cant have hydrates except deep under sediments.

There are no surface hydrates, so rapid destabilization is improbable, unless there is a landslide that uncovers them.

[skierinvermont]

The white area is the continental shelf at this depth. The shallower depths cant have hydrates except deep under sediments.

There are no surface hydrates, so rapid destabilization is improbable, unless there is a landslide that uncovers them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the plumes of methane coming from the ESB and Laptev from depths of less than 300m.

Again all your maps show pretty cool water along the edges where the water would actually be in reasonably close proximity to the sea floor.

[Vergent]

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the plumes of methane coming from the ESB and Laptev from depths of less than 300m.

Again all your maths show pretty cool water along the edges where the water would actually be in reasonably close proximity to the sea floor.

Yes those plumes are from deep in the sediment of shallower water. From 300m down they can form at the surface, in direct contact with the water. In shallower water, they require enough sediment to create the same pressure.

At 300m methane hydrates have a melting point of 0C, while the water 2-3C that has reached the continental shelf is "cool" it is a destabilizing temperature. I showed the 2010 maps to show that the temps in the past were much more stable. this graph is not representing the arctic, the thermal gradient is wrong.

[skierinvermont]

Yes those plumes are from deep in the sediment of shallower water. From 300m down they can form at the surface, in direct contact with the water. In shallower water, they require enough sediment to create the same pressure.

At 300m methane hydrates have a melting point of 0C, while the water 2-3C that has reached the continental shelf is "cool" it is a destabilizing temperature. I showed the 2010 maps to show that the temps in the past were much more stable. this graph is not representing the arctic, the thermal gradient is wrong.

So all you've shown is that destabilizing water temps are at worst possibly brushing up against the very edge of the continental shelf - a negligible surface area.

You haven't shown warming over the continental shelf, and you haven't shown warming at the sea floor where the ocean is deeper than 300-400m.

[skierinvermont]

Also the fact that we're talking about anomalies of 5C+ suggests to me that we're talking more about a naturally occurring event than AGW. The globe hasn't warmed 5C in the last 4 years. Even the arctic hasn't warmed anywhere near 5C in the last 4 years.

[Vergent]

Also the fact that we're talking about anomalies of 5C+ suggests to me that we're talking more about a naturally occurring event than AGW. The globe hasn't warmed 5C in the last 4 years. Even the arctic hasn't warmed anywhere near 5C in the last 4 years.

Skier,

the arctic deep has not changed 1C in the last 60 years. Until now. Now when things are changing rapidly +7C, you want to cling to past stability? Really? Well I guess you are just going to make up your own reality.

Tis is the now reality.

[skierinvermont]

Skier,

the arctic deep has not changed 1C in the last 60 years. Until now. Now when things are changing rapidly +7C, you want to cling to past stability? Really? Well I guess you are just going to make up your own reality.

Tis is the now reality.

Oh I know the arctic deep hasn't warmed ever. And it still hasn't. 300-400m is not the arctic deep.

What's with all the apples to oranges comparisons today?

Do you have any evidence that large warming influxes have not occurred at 300-400m before? I highly doubt AGW is responsible for a 6-7C anomaly at 300m deep. Sounds more like an ocean current thing. But if you have any evidence to the contrary that would be much appreciated.

And I would still like the link to the lovely images you have been providing us, if you don't mind.

[csnavywx]

There are significant stores of hydrates on the ESAS that are at depths less than 300m, including a few as shallow as 20m due to the "self-preservation" effect (metastability). This self-preservation effect is well known in the oil patch. Whether the hydrates there exhibit more of a chronic release or are susceptible to short-term bulk releases is a subject of debate. More evidence exists for chronic release in the paleo-record, but we also haven't had a precedent in the distant past where the Gas Hydrate Stability Zone (GHSZ) could be so close to the surface (due to very cold Arctic water temps) and be subject to rapid warming. During the PETM, such hydrates would have had to exist at great depths and the subsequent changes in temperature in the GHSZ would've been very slow.

[Vergent]

Oh I know the arctic deep hasn't warmed ever. And it still hasn't. 300-400m is not the arctic deep.

What's with all the apples to oranges comparisons today?

Do you have any evidence that large warming influxes have not occurred at 300-400m before? I highly doubt AGW is responsible for a 6-7C anomaly at 300m deep. Sounds more like an ocean current thing. But if you have any evidence to the contrary that would be much appreciated.

And I would still like the link to the lovely images you have been providing us, if you don't mind.

http://data.ncof.co....MS/godiva2.html

I have given the link several times now.

Unlike tropical oceans, which are temperature-stratified (i.e. there is a thermocline), the Arctic Ocean is salinity-stratified, although at high latitudes the ocean is much less stable. The temperature profile is nearly uniform at 0 to 1C in the Arctic Ocean,

http://www-das.uwyo....p17/arctic.html

If you can find anything from the past that says anything different, show me. The anomaly is because the ice melted back to the Arctic basin allowing the gulf stream to flow in(the ice and meltwaters cause it to sink and underturn and go south)

Negative feedback would be nice but the winds are blowing N Atlantic water into the arctic ocean. This will increase the Fram outflow....Also, we would be trading new ice for old....

You see that back in early August I was expecting an inrush of Atlantic water into the arctic. This was because of the arctic storm and the melt back of the ice. Because I was expecting it, I was looking at the temperatures at depth in the arctic. It does not seem that anyone else has discovered this yet.

[SVT450R]

There is a three letter taboo AMO that plays a role in Atlantic water influx's into the arctic this is not some new phenomenon.

[Vergent]

There is a three letter taboo AMO that plays a role in Atlantic water influx's into the arctic this is not some new phenomenon.

Depth profile of late Holocene (red) and MIS3 (blue) Mg/Ca-derived T (K. glacialis) (T = 0.438×Mg/Ca−5.14; Supplementary Figs S1 and S2). Red and blue lines, third-order polynomial fits. Black line, modern temperature from Amundsen Basin (ref. 29). Elevated MIS3 temperatures suggest deeper halocline (HC) and Atlantic Intermediate Water mass at depths 1,000–2,500 m.

No, it hasn't been above 2C in quite some time. AMO haha

[salbers]

One thing I learned from Igor Semiletov at AGU is that there's a ground methane monitoring station on a peninsula/island at the Russian Arctic coast. This location gets a better fetch from the Arctic than Barrow apparently does. I'll have to look for any plots from this location. There's also a plot from a 4000km ship cruise through the northeast passage that shows methane averaging 2100 ppb. This is described in the 2010 Science paper and was measured in 2005.

[Snow_Miser]

I don't think the methane burst from the Arctic that Vergent was concerned about in 2011 had any detectable impact on the Global Temperature at all.

[TerryM]

Nice to see this thread has resurfaced. Vergent, now over at Neven's Forum, has posted an interesting finding that the "blow out vents" which we worried about when they expanded from 10M to a 1 kM size are now reported to be 150 kM across.

A shame that some of the best posters have moved on to other sites.

Terry

[Jonger]

Nice to see this thread has resurfaced. Vergent, now over at Neven's Forum, has posted an interesting finding that the "blow out vents" which we worried about when they expanded from 10M to a 1 kM size are now reported to be 150 kM across.

A shame that some of the best posters have moved on to other sites.

Terry

Where is everyone posting over there. Its pretty dead from what I see. Is there a forum like this?

[TerryM]

Where is everyone posting over there. Its pretty dead from what I see. Is there a forum like this?

You probably lost the thread in the 1,500,000 + hits since the site started this Feb. You can usually keep up with everything if you devote an hour or so to it each day.

A few years ago this was an active site hosting more than a few active threads with good information being passed back and forth. Today I spend far more time at Neven's.

Terry

[PhillipS]

There is a new report from Dr Shakova about increased arctic methane releases - that the rate of methane release from subsea permafrost has accelerated to 17 teragrams (17 megatons) per year. [Discovery article].  I'll try to track a link to the paper itself.

 

 

Methane gas bubbles rising through Arctic Ocean water, seen by a remotely operated vehicle.

[PhillipS]

There is a good column on the Shakova paper and global methane trends at RealClimate.  The take-away, in my opinion, is that global methane concentrations aren't rising fast enough to be alarming at this time.  The rate of methane increase is at least an order of magnitude smaller than what would be needed to significantly affect climate.  Here is the conclusion from the column:

 

Shakhova et al (2013) did not find or claim to have found a 50 Gt C reservoir of methane ready to erupt in a few years. That claim, which is the basis of the Whiteman et al (2013) $60 trillion Arctic methane bomb paper, remains as unsubstantiated as ever. The Siberian Arctic, and the Americans, each emit a few percent of global emissions. Significant, but not bombs, more like large firecrackers.

 

So it appears that methane, including arctic methane, is something that we should be concerned about enough to study closely, but it is not alarming as several other AGW effects such as droughts, extreme weather, rising sea levels and ocean acidification.

[LakeEffectKing]

There is a good column on the Shakova paper and global methane trends at RealClimate.  The take-away, in my opinion, is that global methane concentrations aren't rising fast enough to be alarming at this time.  The rate of methane increase is at least an order of magnitude smaller than what would be needed to significantly affect climate.  Here is the conclusion from the column:

 

Shakhova et al (2013) did not find or claim to have found a 50 Gt C reservoir of methane ready to erupt in a few years. That claim, which is the basis of the Whiteman et al (2013) $60 trillion Arctic methane bomb paper, remains as unsubstantiated as ever. The Siberian Arctic, and the Americans, each emit a few percent of global emissions. Significant, but not bombs, more like large firecrackers.

 

So it appears that methane, including arctic methane, is something that we should be concerned about enough to study closely, but it is not alarming as several other AGW effects such as droughts, extreme weather, rising sea levels and ocean acidification.

Now that is an objective take!  Much different from the first few pages of this awful thread!

[salbers]

The Nature GeoScience paper is here:

 

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2007.html

 

Saw both an oral and poster presentation from Dr. Shakhova at the AGU conference this December. The poster was on how they are calibrating their remotely sensed methane release measurements using an actual controlled release from a gas tank on the sea floor.

 

CONTROL ID: 1798329TITLE: NEW RESULT ON METHANE EMISSIONS FROM THE EAST SIBERIAN ARCTIC SHELFAUTHORS (FIRST NAME, LAST NAME): Natalia E Shakhova^{1, 4}, Igor Peter Semiletov^{1, 4}, Valentin Sergienko², Leopold Isaevich Lobkovsky³, Nicolay Dmitrevsky³, Anatoly Salyuk⁴, Vladimir Yusupov⁴, Alexander Salomatin⁴, Victor Karnaukh⁴, Denis Chernykh⁴, Denis Kosmach⁴, Roman Ananiev³, Alexander Meluzov³, Dmitry Nicolsky⁵, Gleb Panteleev¹INSTITUTIONS (ALL): 1. International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, United States. 

2. Institute of Chemistry, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russian Federation. 
3. Laborotory of seismics, Institute of Oceanology RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation. 
4. Laboratory of Arctic Research, Pacific Oceanological Institute FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russian Federation. 
5. Geophysical Institute, University Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, United States. 
ABSTRACT BODY: Methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost is one of the few carbon-climate mechanisms that could change projected climate forcing substantially in this century. Venting of methane to the atmosphere in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, the world’s largest yet shallowest shelf, was recently shown to be ubiquitous. Here we report results of multi-year investigations performed in the coastal East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), where invasion of relatively warm seawater occurred most recently. Observational data and simulation of the warming effect of seawater on subsea permafrost suggest that disintegrating subsea permafrost allows formation of migration pathways for methane bubbles released from the sea floor. Sonar data collected in the coastal area and in the mid-outer shelf area together with data, obtained using high-resolution high-speed video camera, enabled area-weighted methane fluxes to be estimated. New factors controlling spatial and temporal variability of methane fluxes on the ESAS were found. In the outer shelf, it was shown that methane releases from the seabed via strong flare-like ebullition that produces fluxes much greater than on the shallow shelf, where largely frozen sediments restrict fluxes. The coastward progression of thawing subsea permafrost in a warming Arctic could potentially result in a significant increase in methane emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. 



KEYWORDS: 0475 BIOGEOSCIENCES Permafrost, cryosphere, and high-latitude processes , 1605 GLOBAL CHANGE Abrupt/rapid climate change, 3004 MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS Gas and hydrate systems, 4219 OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL Continental shelf and slope processes.(No Image Selected)(No Table Selected)
Additional DetailsPreviously Presented Material:
Contact DetailsCONTACT (NAME ONLY): Natalia ShakhovaCONTACT (E-MAIL ONLY): [email protected]TITLE OF TEAM: International Siberian Shelf Study

 

The Discovery Article mentioned above has ESAS release presently at about 3% of the global total. However this could increase...

[TerryM]

A new paper:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/ese3.

shows that leakage from fracking operations may be so extensive that rather than using the 100yr equivalent figures for CH4 to CO2 the much higher 20yr figures will come into play.

The paper is not long and it's an easy read.

 

Terry

[chubbs]

A new paper:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/ese3.

shows that leakage from fracking operations may be so extensive that rather than using the 100yr equivalent figures for CH4 to CO2 the much higher 20yr figures will come into play.

The paper is not long and it's an easy read.

 

Terry

 

This is an update of an earlier controversial paper. Paper has a clear discussion of methane emission estimates and does a good job of supporting the factors used. The main takeaway is that there is not much advantage for NG over coal when methane leaks are accounted for.

[Jonger]

This is an update of an earlier controversial paper. Paper has a clear discussion of methane emission estimates and does a good job of supporting the factors used. The main takeaway is that there is not much advantage for NG over coal when methane leaks are accounted for.

 

The link doesn't work for me.

 

I'm guessing it might show an increase in global methane concentrations paralleling the increased use of fracking? 

[chubbs]

The link doesn't work for me.

 

I'm guessing it might show an increase in global methane concentrations paralleling the increased use of fracking? 

 

It doesn't address global methane concentrations only emissions associated with NG production and use and comparison to other fossil fuels. 

[TerryM]

My bad.

The correct linkage is below

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/ese3.3

 

As Chubbs pointed out it compares the damage done by NG losses and finds that even coal is a preferable heat source,

 

Terry

[Jonger]

There are far more concerns with coal. Mercury, acid rain and localized pollution.

 

Most charts I see, show methane levels flattening out compared to the 1984-2000 level of rise.