UA Fairbanks Survey - Methane @ 200X Background Levels In Arctic Seawater As Hydrates Begin Release

[hatrack]

EDIT

"Five years ago, I was not sure it's very serious, but now I'm sure something is going on and we should warn people," says Igor Semiletov from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, chief scientist of the International Siberian Shelf Study, an oceanographic expedition that surveyed the entire Siberian coastline this summer. The study found methane bubbling up from the seafloor over hundreds of square kilometres in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas, according to Semiletov (see Fears surface over methane leaks).

Water measurements indicate that methane concentrations were up to 200 times higher than the background levels, he says. In earlier, less extensive studies in the 1990s, Semiletov did not find such significant releases of methane. "Based on the newly obtained data, we suggest an increase of methane releases from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf," he says.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and scientists estimate that the Arctic permafrost — both on land and underwater — could hold trillions of tons of methane stored mostly in the form of frozen gas hydrates, says Semiletov. The submerged permafrost is on the threshold of melting, and air temperatures in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf have increased by as much as five degrees Celsius over the last decade, he says. "We didn't know that this huge carbon pool is extremely vulnerable."

The impact of such methane releases remains unknown, however. At this point, researchers lack enough data to say whether enough methane is escaping from the Siberian continental shelf to affect the globe, says Edward Brook of Oregon State University in Corvallis, who says he has not seen the new data that Semiletov presented. In a report also released on 16 December by the US Climate Change Science Program, Brook and his colleagues concluded that a catastrophic release of methane is very unlikely this century, although they project that climate change will speed up methane emissions from hydrates and other sources. The report calls for more monitoring of atmospheric methane to determine if any abrupt changes are developing.

EDIT

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081217/full/news.2008.1314.html

[lapfog_1]

1. That's it then... we have screwed ourselves and there isn't a way

to put the genie back in the bottle...

Or, maybe a closer analogy, we have opened the can of soda and now wondering how to put the fizz back.

[GliderGuider]

2. Oops.

Doctor, I keep getting this tipping feeling.


Burning methane hydrate

[hatrack]

3. It's kind of like Mr. Neutron - "We apologize for any inconvenience caused by our bombing!"

:eyes:

[Birthmark]

4. Game over

If mass amounts of methane are released into the atmosphere, that is.

What troubles me most is that we don't know. So far, climate change predictions have almost always been too conservative --for sound scientific reasons, imo. But the changes appear to occur far more rapidly than predicted. So I'm not at all comforted by the "unlikely in this century."

[tom_paine]

5. NO ONE EVER expects the SPANISH INQUISITION!

:rofl:

[Bigmack]

6. Tipping Point Time

I reckon! Why oh why isn't the IMPORTANT news the HEADLINE news...as opposed to whom won the last f'ing football game? Ignorance is only bliss in the VERY short run. Ms Bigmack

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Whoopsie. nt

[Systematic Chaos]

8. It's okay, I got your back!

Have a consolation prize!

Here's a whole page of solar pool heaters!!

And a kitten:

[Nihil]

9. "What's that ticking sound?"

> The submerged permafrost is on the threshold of melting, and
> air temperatures in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf have increased
> by as much as five degrees Celsius over the last decade

:wow:

Good job that there's nothing too sensitive to temperature changes
up there isn't it?

[phantom power]

10. Fetch me my brown trousers!