by Moisha Blechma
When Robert E. Perry sledded toward the North Pole in 1909, every breath caused intense pain. The harsh Arctic wind made it difficult to travel even 13 miles a day. Shifting waterways and moving ice made the journey more treacherous.
Under these extreme conditions, he could not possibly imagine that, only 100 years later, the potential for fire would be bubbling up into the permafrost over much of the Arctic.
Today, lighting a match in the frozen North can ignite clathrates— methane trapped in what looks like dirty ice in the permafrost.
Arctic research scientists are astonished at the rapid increase in the scale and force of methane releases in the Arctic sea bed, too. Russian researchers have found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 meters in diameter, a ten-fold increase since their last expedition, when they were usually 100 meters in diameter. They believe there are thousands of these seeps over a wider area, according to findings they presented at the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The emissions are going directly into the atmosphere without the normal time for microbes to turn them into less damaging carbon dioxide. These structures are called gas hydrates, or clathrates. They exist on the sea floor and in permafrost all across northern Alaska, Canada and Siberia and especially on the east Siberian Arctic Shelf, where the water is relatively shallow and 90 percent of Arctic methane is found. The hydrates are frozen, lattice- like structures that contain methane and a trace amount of water. Methane is a highly unstable gas, difficult to control, and readily flammable.
When released into the atmosphere, it is 70 times more potent as a green house gas than CO2 for the first 20 years of its residence there. It diminishes in power after that, but remains 25% more powerful for the next 100 years. Methane in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased by 150% since 1750. It accounts for 20% of the radiative forcing (i.e., more than would naturally occur) from all the gasses mixed. Methane in the atmosphere does not occur evenly over the planet, but is primarily found over the northern hemisphere.
Methane is the most abundant compound on Earth. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of tons of methane gas are locked away under permafrost and on the deep ocean floor. As the climate warms, methane gas hydrates will continue to release methane into the atmosphere.
As methane releases increase average temperatures, more Arctic ice melts, and methane emissions are ongoing—and accelerating, independent of human activity. This is an immense feedback action and it is possible that, soon, no human effort may be able to stop it.
While New York is experiencing big changes in climate, changes are much more dramatic in the Arctic. Average temperatures have increased by 4°F. where the methane hydrates are concentrated. The Arctic is now a landscape of rapidly rotting ice.
After 4.5 billion years of planetary metamorphoses, the Earth had an atmosphere that sustained life as we know it. The Earth arrived at radiative balance, where it retained just the right amount of solar energy, and sent the rest back into space. The balance is controlled by the proportions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially the carbons—carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). The wild card is that life is largely carbon. Through photosynthesis, life is always producing more carbon. This has been going on for millennia.
Like coal, oil, and gas, methane is made out of former plant life. The methane at shallow levels in the Arctic is made by anaerobic decay of organic matter, and has been held in place, and out of atmospheric mischief, by the cold, by the ice. Burial by ice is a required component of Earth’s system for carbon control. In a warming world, the loss of ice is a sure recipe for ongoing methane release. The fact that we see this happening now, and at an alarming rate, is proof that today’s 393 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere will inevitably lead to that number rising out of control. The idea that humanity can stop temperature increase
at 2°C, a goal set by the Intergovernmental Plan on Climate Change, is wishful thinking. We are looking at catastrophic levels of GHGs in the atmosphere now, at less than a 1 degree C increase.
The 350.org movement was created to communicate the necessity to not just stop increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere, but toreduce the carbon in the atmosphere in order to reestablish radiative balance and keep the ice. But a reduction to 350 ppm is probably not enough. It is likely we need to return to near what Earth itself had established as a working proportion: 280 ppm of CO2. Carbon burials are effectively nature’s waste dumps, not to be touched, and methane is the biggest waste dump of all. In the Arctic, the methane dump is shallow and kept inactive by ice. This is why the Arctic ice cap is key to survival.
Methane is a serious problem in more ways. Methane affects degeneration of the ozone layer. This may already have begun since the ozone is not repairing as expected. The ozone layer is the Earth’s ultraviolet shield.
One quarter of all CO2 emissions are absorbed by the oceans at the rate of more than 20 million tons each day. When CO2 dissolves in water, it forms a weak acid called carbonic acid. Atmospheric CO2 has already changed the PH of ocean water to a level unsympathetic to most marine animals. The release of methane from clathrates on the ocean floor infuses more acid in to the oceans. This means the oceans are getting acid from both above and below. Methane is an asphyxiant eating up oxygen, thus creating oxygen holes in the sea, especially in proximity to the methane releases.
Scientists at the Arctic Methane Energy Group (www.arctic-methane-emergency-group.org) believe we face an impending global emergency of catastrophic proportions. We need to mobilize all of our resources to keep the Arctic ice cap from disappearing. It is essential to survival. It is the first order of security and everything else is trivial by comparison.
Moisha Blechman chairs the Chapter’s Publications Committee as well as the Global Warming Coordinating Committee.