“…March 2010:
Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing. {original text is bold here}
“… Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming according to the National Science Foundation.
Methane release from the not-so-perma-frost is the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle. Research published in the journal
Science finds a key “lid” on “the large sub-sea permafrostcarbon reservoir” near Eastern Siberia “is clearly perforated, and sedimentary CH4 [methane] is escaping to the atmosphere.”
"Scientists learned last year that the permamelt contains a staggering 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere, much of which would be released as methane.* Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon,
but 72 times as potent over 20 years. The carbon is locked in a freezer in the part of the planet warming up the fastest. Half the land-based permafrost would vanish by mid-century on our current emissions path. link.**
No climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. More than 50 billion tons of methane could be unleashed from Siberian lakes alone, more than 10 times the amount now in the atmosphere.…” {Note the original text is red here.} Also note that according to adoucette’s post 360 only a three fold increase would make CH4’s contribution essentially the same as CO2 is making to global warming. Think what a 10 fold increase would do!
From:
http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/METHANE.html
* Note they said carbon in the atmosphere, so that means a potential for doubling the mass of carbon in CO2 but as by weight CH4 is ~25 times more effective so that is 50 fold potential increase effective for 100 years. I.e. a nearly completely opaque to IR atmosphere, like Venus has.
** here is the "link"
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/...t-methane-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-venting/
The first diagram at end of this post is from it.
----------------------- Second source:
”…A large amount of methane is bubbling up from the ocean floor east of Siberia at a surprising rate and could accelerate climate change, researchers said yesterday. …” The amount of methane emitted by that one patch of seabed roughly equals the amount scientists believed was released by all of the world's oceans. But just how the discovery will affect projections of future warming is hard to say, according to a team of scientists from the United States, Russia and Sweden who published their findings yesterday in the journal
Science. …”
From March 5, 2010 Scientific American article at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=methane-siberia-climate-change
I don’t have link to the
Science article – does anyone?
What is extraordinary, is that based on my understanding of the physics alone, I suggested this could be very serious some years ago, as the National Science Foundation scientists are now noting by calling it “the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle.”
For what they mean by "bursting up" - see photo below.
This 2nd photo is from:
http://theferrisfiles.com/2010/03/the-weekly-methane-from-the-deep-biofuel-from-the-sun/ as is the following text:
"Bubble, Bubble, Methane is Trouble: {original is bold} A vast storehouse of methane under the Arctic Ocean has perforated and is starting to leak, researchers disclosed. While scientists have long been preoccupied with methane release from thawing permafrost on mainland Siberia, the underwater stores in the adjoining East Siberian Arctic Shelf are much larger, and the release of even a small fraction could lead to a dramatic increase in global warming. "
It MAY already be too late to stop Earth from switching to its hot stable state. - A totally sterile Earth in a few thousand years.
