Arctic Sea Ice

Arctic methane: Why the sea ice matters

Here's a video from the Arctic News blog, which is run by the people from AMEG (Arctic Methane Emergency Group). I'm not a big fan of geo-engineering, especially if it supports the continuation of business-as-usual, but as this video has some good speakers that dare speak of worst-case scenarios, and it is not an ad for geo-engineering (that will be part 2, I surmise), I think it's worth a watch:

I'm not sure how imminent a methane clathrate collapse is, but I'm not ruling anything out. As long as methane concentrations. global as well as Arctic, are not shooting up dramatically we're in the 'safe' zone (were it not for CO2, of course).

Don't forget, if you want to have regular updates on the situation with regards to methane, you can go to Apocalypse4You's website and the ESRL Data Visualization page for Barrow (or any other sites you want).

Let's make this a sort of open thread where everyone can discuss solutions if they so wish. I haven't changed my opinion that the neoclassical economic concept that drives our economies, societies and cultures needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Maybe the brainwashing of economy students needs to stop first for that to happen.

Edit: In light of my last remark, Gareth Wyn Jones asked me to link to his article called Overshooting Limits (download document by clicking this link). I read it this summer and it gets to the core of the matter very nicely. Explaining the Galbraithian Dilemma was an eye opener for me.

Minimum open thread

The reports of my return are greatly exaggerated. I'm still at my holiday address, on the wretched 56K modem. As I'm going to be realy offline now for 2-3 days to visit my 97 year old grandfather and his 400 litre wine cask, I thought an open thread would be a good idea.

Can we start speculating about the minimum yet? I know trend lines are still dropping, and after this crazy melting season, I don't feel able or willing to make any pronouncement on when it will stop. In 2010 and 2011 the weather forecast maps helped me to announce the minimum a few days in advance, but those maps aren't any help to me this year. All I'm seeing for the coming five days is a persistent high over the Siberian coast and a huge low developing near Iceland, reaching all the way to Scandinavia and the UK. Normally this would mean slowdown for ice decline or even minimum, but this melting season isn't normal.

From one M to another M: Methane. R. Gates posted some graphs of the latest CH4 readings in Barrow, like this one of readings since 2000:Those little red dots on the right are pretty far out. Here's a close-up for recent months:

Now, these outliers could be due to some measurement mistake (happens frequently). In fact, it's the most probable explanation. But after a record melting season, both in the Arctic Ocean and on the Greenland Ice Sheet, this would be yet another stunner. If I've understood correctly, it will take a while for these readings to be corrected or confirmed.

More on methane: Additional to his sea ice thickness web page, Apocalypse4Real has started a methane web page, where he compares IASI data to AIRS/Giovanni methane data. Read his comments below for further explanations.

Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold

The sea ice is leaving us a bit more every year. It's time to start contemplating its absence, which is why I teamed up with Kevin McKinney to write an extended version of the shorter piece you might see pop up here and there. Because you know, disappearing sea ice isn't without consequences.
And that's why it shouldn't leave you cold.

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Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold

The first world in ancient Norse mythology, Niflheim,
sounds just like the Arctic ice. Its snow- and ice-melt gave rise to the frost giant Ymir, from whose body the whole cosmos was formed. Today, science tells us a different story about the sea ice, but in that story, too, the ice is far older than humans. According to Polyak et al. (2010):

…sea ice became a feature of the Arctic by 47 [million years before the present], following a pronounced decline [in carbon dioxide concentrations]… Ice was apparently most widespread during the last 2–3 million years, in accordance with Earth's overall cooler climate.

Since modern humans are just 200,000 years old, the ice might as well be eternal.

But not unchanging. We live in that part of an ice age that is termed an interglacial, when some of the ice retreats in summer. During modern human history the ice cap has melted back each summer as Earth tipped toward the sun, then grown again with new freezing as the year turned toward the Winter solstice.

Polyak et al. continues:

Arctic methane: Russian researchers report

I vowed not to talk about this because it literally makes me sick to my stomach, but it's too important to deny. We all know about the vast deposits of methane clathrates on the Siberian continental shelf. They are kept in place by pressure and low temperatures. However, the temperatures (SAT as well as SST) are getting less and less low in the Arctic, so in theory it could mean that these deposits come loose and leave the ocean floor to end up in the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and some extinction events in the distant past have been linked to the deadly feedback of warming->methane release->more warming->more methane release->etc.

No one is really sure what is going on exactly with those methane deposits, but in the past years there has been much speculation (undoubtedly caused by the spectacular retreat of summer sea ice in the region) and reporting of a probable increase of methane bubbling up from the Siberian continental shelf. And so the results of this year's Russian research mission were eagerly awaited. Mind you, not by me.

It seems the results are in and were reported at AGU last week.
The Independent reports with this article:

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface