Showing posts with label permafrost melting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label permafrost melting. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Don' Worry, Be Happy - It's Only the Arctic So Who Cares?



You know when you've eaten something dodgy and you get that rumbling in your guts that tells you this is no time to go too far from the throne? Well, that's sort of what may be going on in the Arctic right now. There's a definite rumbling across the far North that portends potentially explosive outcomes in the near future. From Scientific American


It's not just craters purportedly dug by aliens in Russia, it's also megaslumps, ice that burns and drunken trees. The ongoing meltdown of the permanently frozen ground that covers nearly a quarter of land in the Northern Hemisphere has caused a host of surprising arctic phenomena.


...The most likely explanation for the newly discovered craters in Russia is an accumulation of methane over centuries or more that then burst out of the thawing ground sometime in the last few years. "High pressure built up and [the ground] literally popped open," explains biogeochemist Kevin Schaefer of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. "If it is indeed caused by melting methane ice, we should expect to see more."

These craters will then become lakes, which further thaw the permafrost around and beneath them as the water traps yet more heat from the sun. Similar new lakes are forming in depressions in the newly thawing lumpy landscape across the Arctic known as thermokarst. Such thermokarst lakes and surrounding marshes create the muddy conditions favoring microbes that break dead plant material down into methane. That methane then bubbles out of the lakes and ground and, where concentrated, can even be lit on fire, leading to cases of flames dancing above the ice.


Even more widespread than blast craters or burning ice are drunken trees. When permafrost thaws, soil that was once as solid as concrete becomes mud, due to the fact that ice makes up as much as 80 percent of the ground in some parts of the Arctic. And because ice takes up more space than water, the ground subsides, causing trees that grew upright to lean as the ground liquefies beneath them. Whole forests have listed like an army of drunkards as a result. This is also bad news for modern infrastructure in the Arctic as well: Roads, pipelines and building foundations sink into mud and crack or entire landscapes subside. "Long term, there are huge economic and social impacts to permafrost degrading," Schaefer notes.


Where the ground slopes, even worse can occur: slumps, which are like slow-moving mudslides that can undermine areas of 40 hectares or more and stretch more than a kilometer across. The largest megaslumps can eat into the landscape at rates of a kilometer per decade and seem to show no signs of stopping. One slump in Russia that has mystified scientists extends more than 70 meters deep into the permafrost and is still growing after starting in the 1970s.


Perhaps the biggest concern of thawing permafrost is a massive and sudden release of methane from the Arctic Ocean and/or permafrost. Methane traps at least eight times more heat than carbon dioxide over decades, driving global warming even faster. The bad news on the belch front are noticeable upticks in the amount of methane produced in the Arctic—an increase of roughly 8 percent over 30 years at the Canada’s Alert Station in the Northwest Territories. And ocean expeditions have observed methane bubbling out of methane ice at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.


By mid-century, computer simulations predict that as much as a third of the permafrost area in Alaska could thaw, at least at the surface, with similar amounts in Canada and Siberia. Once the melt has kicked in—and the frozen dead plants that make up the top three meters or so of the permafrost become food for microbes that release CO2—the process is irreversible. "You can't refreeze it," Schaefer says. "Once the decay turns on you can't turn it off, and it persists for centuries."

The permafrost already holds vast stores of carbon, as much as 1.7 trillion metric tons according to estimates—or more than twice as much as is currently in the atmosphere today. Not all of that will thaw in the near future—some areas of permafrost extend 700 meters deep—but as much as 120 billion metric tons could be released by 2100. That's enough to raise global average temperatures by nearly a third of a degree Celsius. "These are big numbers," Schaefer notes. But "they are in fact small when compared to those projected from burning coal and oil and natural gas. Those emissions are just immense."


MoS, the Disaffected Lib

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

A New Update: I Felt A Chill As I Read This

A week ago came the report of a giant crater in the Siberian permafrost discovered by a Russian helicopter crew. Russian scientists concluded the crater, about 80-metres across, was not the result of a meteor strike but probably was caused by a sub-surface methane explosion.

At the time I speculated whether this was a fluke or whether we'd be seeing more of these things in the high north before long. We didn't have to wait long for the answer.

The Siberian Times reports that reindeer herders have come across two more of these craters.

No word yet on whether anything similar is happening in the Canadian north.

MoS, the Disaffected Lib







UPDATE: Here's an update from Scientific American


A NEW UPDATE: Large spikes of methane being released into the atmosphere above Siberia may be tied to the mysterious craters which have appeared in the landscape, according to a US scientist.

Dr Jason Box, a professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, has highlighted increased levels of methane above the landscape.

The geologist's blog links the craters to climate change, as the melting Siberian permafrost is allowing the greenhouse gas to escape and create the enormous holes.

Using data from a ground-based climate observing station in Tiksi, a small town in the Sakha Republic on the Arctic Ocean coast, Dr Box discovered "high end" levels of methane. The readings were backed up by data from similar stations in Alaska and Canada, according to News.com.au.

The spikes, which Dr Box calls "dragon breaths", may well be connected to the unusual holes that have appeared in the Siberia landscape over the last month.

Three craters have been discovered so far. The first 80m-wide hole was spotted 1,800 miles east of Moscow in a barren permafrost stretch of the Yamal Peninsula, an area that translates as "the end of the world".

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

From The Climate-Change File: The Signs Are Getting Increasingly Ominous

A note from The Mound of Sound with the header, The Tundra's a poppin' alerted me to this strange tale from the far north in Siberia, where a giant crater has appeared.

Says the Mound:

Russian helicopter crews stumbled across what appears to be an 80-metre wide crater in Siberia. They thought it might have been a meteor. Wrong. Russian scientists believe it was gas, probably methane, from melting permafrost that formed a bubble and finally blew up. The helo crew posted a great video of it on YouTube. No one has any idea how deep the hole is but it’s obviously very, very deep.

Makes you wonder if this is a fluke or if we’ll be seeing these in our high north before long. It also begs the question of how much highly pressurized methane must have been released into the atmosphere.


Maybe this dramatic event will... nah, this ominous sign of climatic disaster won't make any difference in the policies of our overlords.