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Ned at 22:35 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
TOP writes: Then again, if the Navy was studying undersea excavation in permafrost just maybe the other guys already have buried cables and what not for anti-submarine hydrophone nets. That would create long rips in the seafloor miles long. Look again at the top panel of figure 1. CH4 is elevated over an area on the order of a million km2 (John cites a figure of 2 million km2 at the top of this post). Digging a few trenches for submarine cables isn't a realistic explanation for this. -
FerdiEgb at 22:25 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
I don't think that the release of methane from the Arctic sea bottom or land permafrost will give huge problems. The previous interglacial, the Eemian shows much higher land temperatures (+ 5 C in Alaska), forests growing until the Arctic ocean (probably no or little permafrost), an ice free ocean (at least in summer), and halve the Greenland ice sheet melted away. Despite this higher temperatures, the methane level reached not more than about 700 ppbv (see http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html ), while humans now induced up to 1900 ppbv (with little increase in the past decade). Thus even if the Arctic seawater temperature should rise (of which there is little information for the Arctic), the possibility of huge changes in methane releases and/or increase of the atmospheric methane levels due to such release is rather remote... -
Ned at 22:24 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
HumanityRules, the Solomon 2010 paper is discussed elsewhere on this site. -
HumanityRules at 22:20 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
To continue to put this in perpective, the Perspectives section in the same Science issue describes the amount of CH4 presntly being lost from this region as "negligible". http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/327/5970/1211 Given this paper is about feedbacks it's interesting that in the same issue of Science there is a paper which may further our knowledge of the role of Stratospheric Water Vapor in climate feedback. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/5970/1219 This paper suggests that atmospheric water vapour can partly explain accelerated warming from 1980 to the end of the 1990's and the flattening of temp through the naughties. They attribute 30% of temp rises in the 1990s to changes in water vapour, something neglected up to now. It concludes by saying it is not possible to say whether this "represents a feedback to global average climate change or a source of decadal variability." -
chris1204 at 19:57 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Thank you for the Wuebbles link, Doug. I found it fascinating. I note the complex relationship between atmospheric methane, and its degradation by the OH radical formed from atmospheric ozone and water. I note the multiple sources of methane including termites. There seems to have been a substantial transient rise caused by the Mt Pinatubo eruption. Drying wetlands indeed may cause decreases in atmospheric methane. Agricultural land may be a less efficient a CH4 sink - certainly a concern. I found myself hearkening back to an earlier discussion on the role of stratospheric water vapor in global warming, in which the argument was advanced that water vapour played a minimal role as a driver of climate change. However, if methane is a source of considerable concern, then water vapour may be much more important than we think in being both a weak greenhouse gas and a major factor in the degradation of a potent greenhouse gas. Similar considerations would apply to ozone - also a greenhouse gas. I guess the greatest challenge facing climatologists lies in integrating the sheer complexity of multiple feedback loops and predicting which loop will become the dominant driver of climate change. Doug – your earlier comment on the ice age raises many questions. You quote from: http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html "After about 1,300 years of cold and aridity, the Younger Dryas seems to have ended in the space of only a few decades (various estimates from ice core climate indicators range from 20 - 70 years for this sudden transition) when conditions became as warm as they are today. Around half of the warming seems to have occurred in the space of a single span of 15 years, according to the latest detailed analyses of the Greenland ice core record (Taylor et al. 1997)." I went to the site and read inter alia: "The Earth entered several thousand years of conditions warmer and moister than today; the Saharan and Arabian deserts almost completely disappeared under a vegetation cover, and in the northern latitudes forests grew slightly closer to the poles than they do at present. This phase, known as the 'Holocene optimum' occurred between about 9,000 and 5,000 years ago (8,000-4,000 14C years ago), though the timing of the warmest and moistest conditions probably varied somewhat between different regions. " I also read: "The unstable nature of the Earth's climate history suggests that it may be liable to change suddenly in the future. By putting large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humans are exerting pressure on the climate system which might produce a drastic change without much prior warning. As the geologist W.S. Broecker has said, "Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks"." Now do not get me wrong. I am certainly not in favour of pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere just for the sake of it. Pumping out less is very likely a good thing for multiple reasons (AGW being but one of them). However, in the light of this background, can we confidently say that current climate behaviour is unprecedented and thus anthropogenic? Likewise, can we predict that a specific intervention will prevent climate change? Can we say that all the sequelae of climate change (anthropogenic or otherwise) are bad? The disappearance of the Sahara desert would be very welcome to those who eke out their livings on its edges. The melting of the permafrost may open up a food basket. The "angry beast" may have its gentler side and like all "angry beasts" have its proper place in the scheme of things. Thus, we decry the threatened extinction of tigers (a concept which would have bewildered many a South East Asian villager a century or two ago). I appreciate this may sound a touch provocative. However, the recent Copenhagen debacle suggests that until such questions are addressed, many developing nations will be unwilling to risk jeopardising their economies and limiting emissions via strategies that inhibit growth. Equally, if AGW is what we fear it to be (and it may well be if the "angry beast" lives up to its reputation), should resources be directed towards adaptation and mitigation? -
CBDunkerson at 18:28 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Andy S, the reason that surface concentrations (and thus atmospheric release) of methane are highest in shallower waters is BECAUSE they are shallow... there is less water for the methane to disperse through. We've been seeing increased methane leaks all around the Arctic for years, but it hasn't been a huge concern because they generally get nowhere near the surface... the methane accumulates in deep water and then is dispersed by currents. Methane leaks in shallower water are a different matter. They can saturate the water all the way up to the surface and thus start leaking into the atmosphere as well. As to geological processes producing methane... look at the ocean floor map. What could possibly produce that much methane that consistently over that large an area? We're not seeing isolated spots of methane release, but rather an entire region producing methane. That clearly points to release from the permafrost due to warming. It also helps to explain why other studies have found that atmospheric methane levels have been increasing the past few years. -
Jeff Freymueller at 17:55 PM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Peter, yes Jason 2 has all three. The link below includes a drawing: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ostm/spacecraft/index.html -
Jeff Freymueller at 17:52 PM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
#58 Peter Hogarth, I am pretty sure that Jason 2 has all three, although I would have to look it up. I don't know if every group that estimates orbits for Jason uses all of the available positioning systems, or if people use different combinations. Certainly you can use just one, and it is done to check that all are consistent with each other. The time series of positions for the ground stations that go into the ITRF definitely are produced independently. Each technique's solution is also a combination of multiple analyses. For example, the GPS time series for ITRF2005 was based on a combination of 7 separate analyses using 6 different software systems. Many of the DORIS stations are co-located with GPS, SLR, and/or VLBI stations (the general rule is that almost everything is co-located with GPS, because it is so relatively cheap). There are an increasing number of co-locations with tide stations (mostly with GPS), and the goal is to link together all of these systems. -
John Mason at 17:41 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Hi folks, New on here but have been an occasional poster on RC for years. This is a development I hoped I would never see. I guess the key work - in the field - now has to be to monitor the outgassing rate and watch for any increases above what we already see. Geologically speaking, the area is primarily an epicontinental platform, although there are some small sedimentary basins containing up to 6km of post-Cretaceous sediments - these are potential hydrocarbon sources, although the widespread outgassing recorded suggests a more widespread source for the methane. Cheers - John -
From Peru at 16:24 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
East Siberian Arctic Shelf releases mpore methane than all the rest of the world ocean... ... but how much methane is released from Siberian land? It would be interesting to compare release of methane from the Arctic Sea with the methane released from the Siberian Land. Anyone has the data? -
Andy Skuce at 15:58 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
doug_bostrom: Thanks for the link to the Wuebbles article.. I don't doubt for a minute that there is biogenic methane trapped by permafrost layers in shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean; I've seen the same thing in the Canadian Beaufort Sea years ago. Nor do I doubt the plausibility of the hypothesis that predicts that warming waters could melt the permafrost seal and release the gas to the atmosphere. It's just that there's a lot of complex deep geology that also can generate methane and leak it to the surface. One might expect that if was deep geology controlling the gas release, then the effect would be variable over the area (as was observed), whereas a buried shelf of tundra might have a more areally constant concentrations of released CH4. Of course, if it can be demonstrated that the release of gas is a recent phenomenon and the release rate increases as the ocean warms then my questions become moot. In any case, the new observations of enormous emissions of methane, as they stand, are alarming enough. -
Andy Skuce at 15:22 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
ubrew12 The concluding sentence of the Shakhova et al article reads "To discern whether this extensive CH4 venting over the ESAS is a steadily ongoing phenomenon or signals the start of a more massive CH4 release period, there is an urgent need for expanded multifaceted investigations into these inaccessible but climate-sensitive shelf seas north of Siberia." Making such comments at the end of an article or asking similar questions on a blog (as chriscanaris did with his first question) constitutes a proper sceptical approach to communicating and understanding science, and it's not pointless nit-picking. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:16 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
chriscanaris at 13:36 PM on 6 March, 2010 The fate of methane in the atmosphere is known with excellent confidence. See information about sources and sinks including atmospheric degradation of methane here: Atmospheric methane and global change (pdf) Andy S at 14:11 PM on 6 March, 2010 This introductory bit of the paper will help answer your questions: "The terrestrial and continental shelf regions of the Arctic contain a megapool of carbon in shallow reservoirs (1–3), most of which is presently sequestered in permafrost (4, 5). Sustained release of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere from thawing Arctic permafrost is a likely positive feedback to climate warming (5, 6). Arctic CH4 releases are implied in both past climate shifts (7, 8) and the renewed growth of contemporary atmospheric CH4 (9, 10). Observed Arctic warming in early 21st century is stronger than predicted by several degrees (fig. S1A) (11–14), which may accelerate the thaw-release of CH4 in a positive feedback. Investigations of Arctic CH4 releases have focused on thawing permafrost structures on land (2, 4–6, 15, 16) with a scarcity of observations of CH4 in the extensive but inaccessible East Siberian Arctic Seas (ESAS), where warming is particularly pronounced (fig. S1A) (11). The ESAS (encompassing the Laptev, East Siberian, and Russian part of the Chuckchi seas) occupies an area of 2.1 x 106 km2, three times as great as that of terrestrial Siberian wetlands. It is a shallow seaward extension of the Siberian tundra that was flooded during the Holocene transgression 7 to 15 thousand years ago (17, 18). The ESAS sub-sea permafrost (fig. S1B), which is frozen sediments interlayered with the flooded peatland (18), not only contains comparable amounts of carbon as still land-fast permafrost in the Siberian tundra but also hosts permafrost-related seabed deposits of CH4 (19). Moreover, ESAS sub-sea permafrost is potentially more vulnerable to thawing than terrestrial permafrost. In contrast to on-land permafrost, sub-sea permafrost has experienced a drastic change in its thermal regime because of the seawater inundation. The annual average temperature of ESAS bottom seawater (–1.8° to 1°C) is 12° to 17°C warmer than the annual average surface temperature over on-land permafrost (18, 19). A physical implication of combined bottom-up geothermal and top-down seawater heat fluxes is the partial thawing and failure of sub-sea permafrost and thus an increased permeability for gases. We consequently hypothesized that CH4 is released from seabed deposits to vent extensively to the Arctic atmosphere." -
TOP at 15:07 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Ah, the old clathrate gun hypothesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis Then again, if the Navy was studying undersea excavation in permafrost just maybe the other guys already have buried cables and what not for anti-submarine hydrophone nets. That would create long rips in the seafloor miles long. http://www.dtic.mil/srch/doc?collection=t3&id=ADA165939 -
James Wight at 14:33 PM on 6 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Can I make a few suggestions regarding the hierarchy of arguments? When you have time, you might want to consider the following: I think “CO2 effect is saturated” more rightly belongs under “CO2 effect is weak”; and “It’s CFCs” belongs under “CO2 is not the only driver of climate”. And “CO2 is not increasing” could perhaps go somewhere in the category “Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate”. Perhaps “Pacific Islanders aren’t evacuating” could be a subcategory of “Pacific Islands are not drowning”? And shouldn’t “The Earth’s orbit is decaying” go under “It’s the Earth’s orbit”? And “Hemispheric timing” under “CO2 is coming from the ocean”? And “CO2 increases vegetation” under “CO2 is plant food”? “Technological breakthroughs will fix global warming” doesn’t seem to belong in “It’s not us” at all. Perhaps it could go instead in “It’s not bad”. Similarly, “Better to adapt than mitigate” and “China pollutes more” could both move from “It’s not bad” to “It’s too late”. “Mann inverted the Tiljander series” would seem to be the same argument as “Tiljander was flipped upside down”. The same goes for “It’s magnetic poles” and “It’s geomagnetic activity”. And “Phil Jones hid flaws in UHI study” is very similar to “Chinese station data is missing”. “CO2 limits will harm the economy” is very similar to “The benefits of reducing CO2 isn’t worth the economic pain”. Also, three particular arguments don’t seem to be displaying on the “taxonomy” list of 91 arguments: “Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy”, “Trenberth can’t account for the lack of warming”, and “CO2 is not a pollutant”.Response: James, thanks very much for the very detailed and useful feedback - I've actually followed all your suggestions and shuffled the arguments around to make the categorising somewhat more accurate. The argument list with its hierarchy has developed in a fairly ad hoc fashion over the years and while I try to keep it in order, well, incongruities do escape my attention. So I very much appreciate your thoughtful comments. I've also fixed the glitch that caused those 3 arguments not to appear on the taxonomy list. -
ubrew12 at 14:15 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
chriscanaris said: "Are we dealing with a true increase in the rate of methane release... or are we seeing a lot of methane in the Arctic because we've only recently started looking for it" Those are interesting questions for the disinterested. Those concerned with the unintentional consequences of AGW have brought up the spector of Arctic methane repeatedly for 30 years. Those consequences have now been measured. The result is 'ouch'. Against that concern, and those results, you want to ask the semantic 'gosh, how did this happen' game?? Here is my response: We predicted it. If it is actually happening, the burden of proof is on YOU to provide an alternate explanation. Failing that, you have actually, just through your question, disqualified yourself from ever having asked it. I'm simply pointing out here, that the asking of questions does not, by itself, constitute scientific inquiry. If it did, we would never get anywhere. Somewhere, in a cloistered room, a coven of monks is still trying to count the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin. And when they get their count we will hopefully determine whether Copernicus was right or not. And I don't think the result of their count constitutes the proper pervue of SkepticalScience.com -
Andy Skuce at 14:11 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
The implication of this article--that warming ocean waters are melting submarine permafrost--is certainly scary and is, I would guess, the most plausible hypothesis. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see so little discussion of the deep geology of the ESAS in the article. I would ask: 1) Do we know for sure that the methane is biogenic or could it be thermogenic (deeply sourced)? Perhaps some chemical analysis of the gas to see what traces of ethane, propane and so on are present might be helpful. 2) Are the "hotspots" (an unfortunate choice of term because it implies unproven locally elevated temperatures) associated with underlying geological features such as growth faults in deltas or diapiric/folded shale ridges (such are observed in the Canadian Beaufort Sea and in the Caspian Sea and are associated with deep gas seeps and mud volcanoes)? 3) On Figure 2B, the concentration of dissolved methane is highest over a bathymetric high. Is this due to the fact that relatively shallow waters have warmed more or is the high reflecting anomalous deep geology in some way? -
Doug Bostrom at 13:49 PM on 6 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel at 12:28 PM on 6 March, 2010 Indeed circumstances have changed and so has our perspective. Extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary evidence. However, in my humble opinion a rising tide of evidence is submerging what initially seemed to be eye-popping claims. As time has passed and I've read more on this matter I'm increasingly persuaded that C02 may represent a type of WMD that will cost us a lot whether we ignore it or not, probably more if we try to dodge accountability. Unlike the the phantom WMD of the late unpleasantness in Iraq, I don't think we'll be wasting trillions on the subsequent war; by fixing our C02 problem we'll simultaneously be getting a jump on work we need to do within the next 200 years regardless and thus making a vital and unavoidable investment while it's more easily leveraged. If I were a physicist I'd be delighted to see us finally moving from our atavistic caveman habits of setting things on fire just to derive a little heat and motive power. Instead, as a layperson who sits on his duff cashing royalty checks obtained from petroleum production, with mixed feelings, I'll still be very happy to see us stop using petroleum in a neolithic style. We should instead be husbanding petroleum for more useful things, thereby avoiding for as long as possible the need to jam hydrogen and carbon together using energy we have to obtain from elsewhere. Call me simpleminded, but this whole matter just does not seem complicated to me at all, not the physics part anyway. Human nature, different story! -
chris1204 at 13:36 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
I'd expect sea water overlying ancient frozen wetlands to be supersaturated with CH4 irrespective of temperature (or am I vastly mistaken?). I'd therefore expect some of this to be escaping into the atmosphere. Are we dealing with a true increase in the rate of methane release (the inferred scenario) or are we seeing a lot of methane in the Arctic because we've only recently started looking for it? Tom W says we 'can't really say right now that the methane field is destabilising because there is no significant record.' I think this is the crucial question. At the same time, as parts of the world get drier and we see decreases in wetlands and tropical wetlands (not that I consider this desirable), we may have a counterbalancing decrease in CH4 release elsewhere. Does anyone have any idea how the two processes might balance out? I note also that CH4 degrades (eventually). Do we know anything about the dynamics of degradation versus release into the atmosphere? Finally, did atmospheric CH4 increase at the end of the last great warming mainly because of warming or do we suspect other mechanisms contributed significantly? If so, are any of these relevant to today's situation? -
Doug Bostrom at 13:32 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Jerry at 13:16 PM on 6 March, 2010 A bit long in the tooth but still useful: "Around 14,000 years ago (about 13,000 radiocarbon years ago), there was a rapid global warming and moistening of climates, perhaps occurring within the space of only a few years or decades. In many respects, this phase seems to have resembled some of the earlier interstadials that had occurred so many times before during the glacial period. Conditions in many mid-latitude areas appear to have been about as warm as they are today, although many other areas - whilst warmer than during the Late Glacial Cold Stage - seem to have remained slightly cooler than at present. Forests began to spread back, and the ice sheets began to retreat. However, after a few thousand years of recovery, the Earth was suddenly plunged back into a new and very short-lived ice age known as the Younger Dryas. Although the Younger Dryas did not affect everywhere in the world, it destroyed the returning forests in the north and led to a brief resurgence of the ice sheets. This map by D. Peteet shows the possible distribution of Younger Dryas cooling around the world. The main cooling event that marks the beginning of the Younger Dryas seems have occurred within less than 100 years, according to Greenland ice core data (Alley et al. 1993). After about 1,300 years of cold and aridity, the Younger Dryas seems to have ended in the space of only a few decades (various estimates from ice core climate indicators range from 20 - 70 years for this sudden transition) when conditions became as warm as they are today. Around half of the warming seems to have occurred in the space of a single span of 15 years, according to the latest detailed analyses of the Greenland ice core record (Taylor et al. 1997)." From this: A quick background to the last ice age More background on ice core techniques here: End of the Last Glacial Period Inferred from Trapped Air in Polar Ice (pdf)
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Jerry at 13:16 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
"About 11,600 years ago, the planet warmed very suddenly." How fast is suddenly? Thanks, Jerry -
Alan E at 13:08 PM on 6 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Skeptical Science is the best place I know to find current information about the AGW hypothesis. Thank you to John Cook! It appears that the climate science community has no choice other than to a) publish in the best peer-reviewed journals; wait for the plethora of objections from scores of amateur scientists; and then b) respond to each objection-group with reference to peer-reviewed literature. Of course, this is happening to an extent on various sites. But I have found that such sites often revert to dismissive put-downs (eg Deltoid) or language which is inaccessible (eg RC/BraveNewClimate). The messages get lost. Trust is the critical issue. Most people (me included) don't have the time or expertise to follow and validate the micro-detailed stuff on many blogs. The questions I now use to filter material on the AGW hypothesis (pro or anti) which I trust are (order reflects weighting!): * is it from a peer-reviewed paper? * is the commentator a reviewer of climate science papers? * is the commentator an author of a peer-reviewed & published climate science paper? * is the commentator a current climate scientist who actually works with one of the climate models considered by the IPCC? * is the commentator a current climate scientist? It's the only way I can move forward ... So, this site is really important for two basic reasons - it is committed to citing peer-reviewed publications (pro and anti); and it tries to use accessible language. More please! (And the climate science community should immediately adopt the policy of making accessible ALL the source data and methods supporting peer-reviewed publications ... just make FOI requests a non-issue and remove the time demands associated with complying with FOI requests.) -
Tom W at 12:54 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
While it is true that the amount being released now in the ESAS is small compared to the total methane release rate, the scary thing is that this area alone contains (estimated) twice as much methane as is contained in the atmosphere right now. We should be wary of such a large reservoir becoming unstable especially since the permafrost is so close to the freezing point. Of course we can't really say right now that the methane field is destabaliz-ING because there is no significant record. But I do think that we are at the point where any sane person would buy just a little insurance. -
Steve L at 12:33 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
The wikipedia article on atmospheric methane is pretty good (IMHO) and it has a table that may help to put some big picture perspective on this news. Approximately 3% of total methane added to the atmosphere is listed as coming from oceans (I'm not sure if there is now ~6% if these latest results are applied). Wetlands (including rice agriculture) account for 37%. Farm animals account for 19%. There are other contributors readers might find interesting. Anyway, the most optimistic thing I can think to write is that we have pleny of scope to cut back anthropogenic emissions elsewhere. Halving beef production (or trapping the gas of cows) should easily compensate for even a doubling of the amount of methane released from this area. Right?, I ask hopefully. Finally, does the paper indicate how sea life is responds to all this supersaturated water? Methane reacts with oxygen in the water, so presumably this region is anoxic. Right?, I ask somberly.Response: ...does the paper indicate how sea life is responds to all this supersaturated water?
No, it doesn't look at impacts of the rising methane. It's mainly concerned with the measurement of methane levels in the water and atmosphere above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. -
Marcus at 12:28 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
There is strong evidence that the Permian Extinction Boundary-where 95% all marine life died out-was caused by the melting of methane clathrates. Anyone else just a little bit scared yet? -
gallopingcamel at 12:28 PM on 6 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
doug_bostrom, (#120). Good story about the physicist; for a moment I thought you had tracked me down as my field is particle accelerators! It seems that we agree that it makes sense to get the data sets cleaned up. Will that change anything? Let's wait and see. I hope you agree with the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Should we spend hundreds of billions of dollars unless the evidence is truly "unequivocal"? -
Tom W at 12:13 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Sry, Should be "sudden warming at the END of the Younger Dryas". -
Tom W at 12:12 PM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
This new work is interesting and a bit scary. It will be interesting to see if any trends are detected in the next few years. But... Neither of the two papers to which you have linked support clathrate methane as the primary driver of sudden warming during the Younger Dryas, although they do not rule it out as part of a larger GHG feedback. A better example for the clathrate gun hypothesis might be the PETM. -
Jim Meador at 11:49 AM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Is there a temperature record for the water around the underwater permafrost? I would be curious to see the trends. -
John Bruno at 11:45 AM on 6 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Daisym, John clearly explained the mechanism through which AGW is melting arctic ice and allowing methane to be released from the benthos. It isn't that complicated. The thawing of terrestrial tundra permafrost is having the same effect. There is underwater permafrost because during the last ice age, sea level was lower than it is now. The permafrost was created, then it was submerged when sea level rose. Try googling "underwater permafrost" and you can learn all about it. -
Peter Hogarth at 11:19 AM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Jeff, just to elaborate on your points a little, am I correct in stating that Jason 2 (for example) has all three tracking systems, (Dual GPS receivers, DORIS, and Laser ranging reflectors) and they are all independent? I know many of the 50 or so DORIS base stations are co-located (on the Earths surface) with GPS stations - some near tide gauges, and some of the handful of Laser Ranging stations are also co-located. The GPS receivers allow very high accuracy tracking of the altimeter satellites using the in view constellation of GPS satellites independent of the ground station data. Is it the case that tide stations and altimeters are ultimately independently locked into the GPS reference frame (for starters)? This detail is stretching my knowledge a bit thin... -
Admiral Memo at 09:43 AM on 6 March 2010A brief history of our iPhone app
I'll put my support in with those who want a Droid app. I've got one and I know already that once its Market gets enough apps, it'll give the iPhone a run for its money. The Droid is solid and can only improve from this point. -
Jeff Freymueller at 06:19 AM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
#56 RSVP. If you know the position of the satellite, and the distance from the satellite to the sea surface, then you know the position of the sea surface. So mainly you are asking about the first part. The two most important parts of determining the satellite orbit are the earth's gravity field, and the speed of light. Satellites can't wander about -- they obey the equations of motion subject to particular forces: earth's gravity field, solar radiation pressure on the satellite, etc. You integrate the equations of motion from a set of initial conditions, and then adjust the initial conditions (and, if needed, elements of the force model for drag, radiation pressure, etc) in order to fit data. The data here are your tracking data -- the satellite may have an onboard GPS receiver, or DORIS transponder, or a laser-ranging retroreflector. But you are measuring the distance between the satellite and various ground and/or space-based sites, and using this series of observations to estimate the satellite orbit. -
RSVP at 06:02 AM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
51.RSVP at 22:02 PM on 5 March, 2010 How do they position the height of satellites anyway? 52.Riccardo at 23:36 PM on 5 March, 2010 RSVP, you can find a general discussion on satellite positioning "here" Riccardo I went "there" (ie NASA), and they explain that they use microwave altimeters, computers, etc., all good to determine how far up the satellite is. That was not my question. I guess its a chicken and egg thing. How do you know how much the sea has risen or dropped if all you know is how far away you are from the Earth (even if you know to within 1 mm)? Especially when satellites are continually losing altitude and requiring repositioning? -
Doug Bostrom at 04:17 AM on 6 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel at 02:57 AM on 6 March, 2010 I'm totally in favor of a ground-up redo of CRU's analysis, even if only necessary because 30 years ago few could see how fraught with suspicion and controversy such a relatively mundane data processing exercise could become. I'm sorry if I misread your remarks as cynical; the air these days is positively thick with not even risen as opposed to half-baked accusations of intentional misbehavior on CRU's part. I recently participated in another discussion with a fellow who insisted that losing any data raw or processed was the height of irresponsibility for a practicing scientist, especially one expending taxpayer dollars in pursuit of research. He identified himself as an active experimental particle physicist and it was clear from his examples he was (no surprise, accelerators==taxpayer money) relying on other people's money to conduct his research. He referred over and over again to his work in the 80's supporting his PhD thesis, how important it was to preserve detector data and the like, how his adviser would never have tolerated any loss. Finally somebody thought to demand he restore all of his raw data, algorithms etc. which of course he could not do, frankly admitting that was now impossible because of the passage of time. That's a particularly appropriate example, because the physicist in question found his own earlier work became unpredictably controversial in a later context and then of course could not produce every last iota of data collected decades before. The entire time I've been listening to the CRU badgering, I've been thinking about the proverbial glass house and stone throwing therein. Ignoring the statute of limitations, if the IRS decided I had some problem with my taxes back in 1980 both they and I would have the dickens of a time making a firm case to demonstrate every last dollar had been accounted for. As to the fundamental issue with dropped stations, I urge you to read carefully the work at the links I provided. -
Riccardo at 03:33 AM on 6 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
galopingcamel, the file with the UAH dataset quote the decadal trend in the last line. The number they give updated Jan 2010 is 0.130. -
gallopingcamel at 02:57 AM on 6 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
doug_bostrom (#115), I have never claimed that the dropped station issue will inflate or deflate the apparent rate of warming. To make that determination one would need the full data set as well as the truncated one. At the risk of repeating myself, my point is that a good scientist does not discard data without explaining why he is doing it. Phil Jones has made his excuses for the problems with HADCRUT3. We are still waiting for Tom Peterson to explain what is going on at NASA/GISS. With regard to NOAA/GHCN, take a look at "Digging in the Clay": http://diggingintheclay.blogspot.com/2009/12/physically-unjustifiable-noaa-ghcn.html P.S. Thanks for that link about wine growing on the other thread.....very interesting! -
Jeff Freymueller at 02:49 AM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
#54, Berényi Péter I do satellite positioning for a living. You are confusing the coordinate system with the tracking network. The tracking network deforms, the underlying coordinate system does not. The tracking network is a means of accessing the coordinate system, not the system itself. The context of the Leuliette paper is that earlier work (like Douglas) simply omitted all tide gauges that were thought to have vertical motions. This may be fine for the global rate, but leaves large swaths of the globe (like the North Pacific) with no tide gauge data, which causes problems at the regional scale. Here's the abstract of the Beckley et al. paper, which you can access for free (as you know): Mean sea level trends from TOPEX and Jason-1 altimeter data are recomputed using unified geophysical modeling and the new ITRF2005 terrestrial reference frame for the entire altimetric time series, with consistent orbits based on satellite laser ranging (SLR) and DORIS tracking data. We obtain a global rate of 3.36 ± 0.41 mm/yr over the 14 year period from 1993 to 2007. The regional sea level trends computed with the new reference frame show significant north/south hemispherical offsets of ±1.5 mm/yr relative to trends based on the previous 1995-era frame. Regional sea level trend comparisons for the time periods of 1993–1999 and 1999–2005 reveal strong basin-scale polarities and pronounced inter-decadal variability, with a relative increase in the global mean sea level trend of 1.5 ± 0.7 mm/yr in the latter seven years. As for the "paywall", your objection is over-the-top given that you could buy this article for $9 from AGU if you wanted, and if you email one of the authors they will almost certainly email you back a PDF if they don't already have a preprint version on their website. It is hardly locked up. If there is a research university where you live, you don't even need to set up a proxy. You should be able to walk into the library, go to the journals section, and make a xerox copy of the article for just the cost of xeroxing. Or if you are really serious about things, you can join AGU for $20 a year (only $7 if you are a student, I think) and get a cheap personal subscription (very cheap for complete access to all back issues of all AGU journals). I view it as a subscription that provides the revenue that allows a non-profit scientific society to continue to publish and function. If you want all published articles to be available for free, I would not mind at all, but somehow at least non-profit scientific publishing has to remain viable, and nobody pushing free access has proposed a believable way to do that. I don't really care what happens with the for-profit publishers; they are the ones who charge very high prices for subscriptions and individual papers. -
gallopingcamel at 02:31 AM on 6 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Riccardo, (#116), your P.S. comment is puzzling to say the least. Are you talking about this document: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/metoffice_proposal_022410.pdf Some see this as a PR or CYA exercise aimed at dousing the Climategate fire. Frankly I don't care what you call it as long as the data gets cleaned up and published in its raw state so that researchers can make their own decisions about what is good, bad or ugly. With regard to the UAH data set. The one I am looking at runs from 1978 to 2009. Over this 31 year period the trend is 0.05 degrees Celsius or 0.016 C/decade. In other words, not statistically significant. -
Berényi Péter at 02:16 AM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
#49 Peter Hogarth at 20:54 PM on 5 March, 2010 "as it stands is fundamentally flawed" Yes, I realize it is. The change in LoD caused by steric sea level change is negligible at first approximation. The steric part of the figure I have calculated should be multiplied by the ratio of depth with temperature change (1000 m?) and Earth's radius. It makes it more than three orders of magnitude smaller, microseconds instead of msecs. For eustatic rise (when water mass is changing), this is not the case. However, effect on LoD depends on latitude of source. If landlocked watermass makes its way into the ocean from latitude fi, actual delta_LoD is proportional to 1-1.5*cos(fi). Latitude 48 11 (N/S) is neutral, water from here has no effect on LoD. Poleward from there the coefficient is positive, increasing. At southern tip of Greenland (60N) it is 0.25, goes up to 0.8 for Norhern fringe (82N). Uneven latitudal distribution of landmasses can modify this relationship somewhat. Observed drift of pole is also a limiting factor, needs further care. Mass contribution to sea level rise, if any, should have been balanced between low and high latitudes. There was not much ice in temperate zone & tropics, so it is a limiting factor. As for steric rise, if half of 20th century rise (~10 cm) is attributed to thermal expansion and it occurred in the upper 1000 m of ocean, temperature rise should have been close to 1K (thermal expansion coefficient of water is ~10^-4 in realistic temperature range). To warm up 10^6 kg water by 1K, 4x10^9 J is needed. It can be supplied by a constant global 1 W/m^2 excess flux, concentrated to the oceans for a century. Way too much for last century, therefore considerably less than half of supposed rise could be steric. #40 Jeff Freymueller at 16:03 PM on 5 March, 2010 "the coordinate system itself does not deform due to plate tectonics" The coordinate system used by TOPEX/POSEIDON/JASON does deform and not just because of plate tectonics. It is linked to a set of only 64 tide gauges. Marine Geodesy, 27, 79–94 Calibration of TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason altimeter data to construct a continuous record of mean sea level change Leuliette, E., R. Nerem, G. Mitchum, 2004 see 2.2 Tide Gauge Calibration (pp. 9), especially the part on Douglas rate. Satellite datasets are dependent on it, GPS & DORIS calibration just "should be used at every gauge, and work along these lines is proceeding". At the moment slope is based on a single global assessment (Douglas, 1997) and historic rates of gauges. Would like to see GRL A reassessment of global and regional mean sea level trends from TOPEX and Jason-1 altimetry based on revised reference frame and orbits B. D. Beckley, F. G. Lemoine, S. B. Luthcke, R. D. Ray & N. P. Zelensky Unfortunately it is behind a paywall. I could set up a university proxy and have a look of course, but I don't do that. IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) is a devastating thing when applied to science. On a public site, in public debate only publicly available material should be used. In fact it should be that way for each & every scientific publication. -
Peter Hogarth at 00:22 AM on 6 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
HumanityRules at 11:10 AM on 4 March, 2010 My apologies, I forgot the Nerem 2009 link in 48. https://abstracts.congrex.com/scripts/jmevent/abstracts/FCXNL-09A02a-1728088-1-OceanObs2009cwp_final.pdf -
Tony Noerpel at 00:19 AM on 6 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Hi BaerbelW Absolutely right. Interestingly, the lesson we should take from Y2K is that we asked our experts, computer analysts, to evaluate the problem and propose a solution. They did and we trusted them and did not question the need to invest some money in the solution. As a result, nothing bad happened and the investment in upgraded software most likely benefitted the economy rather than hurt the economy. In other words any economic argument not to respond to the problem were quite frankly baseless. With respect to AGW, humanity has asked our best experts to study the problem and propose solutions. They've done that. The IPCC report is one of the most incredible achievements of humanity. It is the first time our reaction to a serious problem was the application of critical thinking rather than say going to war (the Bush administration solution to peak oil for example). Economic arguments are again unsubstantiated and baseless, even on the very remote possibility that the IPCC report is wrong (say some value of epsilon greater than zero but smaller than say the probability that the Nats will win the world series every year for the next hundred years.) I take issue with coal geologist writing: "Admittedly, some who concur with AGW do so on the basis of faith or prejudice, and are equally as dogmatic as many of those who reject AGW." As a matter of fact, besides the handful of people (not even too many of the commenter’s here) virtually all people do not have the training and time to properly evaluate climate physics and the IPCC report, sorry. People who accept this report are entirely rational and sane. People who like George Will, Senator Inhofe, Glen Beck, Marc Morano, and the clownish Third Lord Viscount Monckton of Benchley, who deny the science based on maybe the stuff they forgot from a junior high school earth sciences course, are in denial. Referring to them as deniers is being accurate. If anybody thinks they can have a rational discussion based on science and fact with such people if only we adopt a better name for them besides the rather appropriate “denier” is deluding himself. I suggest you try it. I have. Pick a local elected official who denies AGW and make an appointment to discuss it with them. By all means arm yourself with the best science. You will find out that they will tell you how wonderful the Inhofe 400 prominent scientist report is despite the obvious fact that they haven't actually read it. (It wasn't ever actually meant to the read and I doubt Inhofe, Morano and Dempsey even read it.) And they will have some unkind things to say about Al Gore. And they will mention one or two of the more ridiculous denier arguments (water vapor is 98% of the GHG effect, in the 70's.., Mars is warming.., GCRs, it will hurt the economy to do anything about it, the hockey stick was debunked, it's the sun, or worse). These they believe unquestioningly while insisting on being called "skeptical". What we are struggling with here is that the human brain may not be wired to avoid self extinction. Of coure, we have no choice but to press on. Check this out: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/5970/1246 Best regards Tony -
Jesús Rosino at 00:07 AM on 6 March 2010Temp record is unreliable
We can add to "other lines of evidence for rising temperatures" also indirect evidence you mentioned elsewhere: - Greenland and Antarctica show net ice loss - Acceleration of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, particularly within the last few years. - Sea-ice loss in the Arctic is dramatically accelerating - Accelerating decline of glaciers throughout the world. - Rapid expansion of thermokarst lakes throughout parts of Siberia, Canada and Alaska - Disintegration of permafrost coastlines in the arctic - Poleward migration of species - Poleward movement of the jet streams (Archer 2008, Seidel 2007, Fu 2006) - Widening of the tropical belt -
Riccardo at 23:36 PM on 5 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
RSVP, you can find a general discussion on satellite positioning here -
RSVP at 22:02 PM on 5 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
How do they position the height of satellites anyway? -
Peter Hogarth at 21:11 PM on 5 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Steve L at 07:32 AM on 4 March, 2010 I have been looking for a good visual of the North/South Seasonal variation. CSIRO has something on their fine website. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_drives_seas_dec.html -
Peter Hogarth at 20:54 PM on 5 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Berényi Péter at 13:23 PM on 5 March, 2010 I admire the working and effort (and charts), but your "spherical shell" argument as it stands is fundamentally flawed. Much of the estimated 3.3 mm/yr rise is "steric", ie due to processes that cause an increase in ocean volume without a change in mass, mainly through changes in temperature (thermal expansion) and salinity. The remaining "eustatic" rise, does refer to mass increase (at least in the oceanographic community). This is changes in land runoff, including glaciers and ice sheets but as has been pointed out above, this is a re-distribution of mass, and only a proportion of this will effectively move in latitude. There is recent work on this (I'll look), some references submitted by others above (thanks Jeff). Again, look at the GLOSS summary linked in the post. The Geodetic guys are well represented. The ITRF reference frame is a virtual co-rotating frame, not referenced to the Earths surface as such, but to its "centre" (or very close). For full fetails see http://itrf.ensg.ign.fr/general.php -
Peter Hogarth at 20:03 PM on 5 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
HumanityRules at 11:10 AM on 4 March, 2010 You make a fair general point, but this is not a case of one data set correcting another which then validates the first! The tidal station data are relative (Land level-Sea Level) so to make them absolute we need land vertical offset corrections for individual samples, or vertical velocity estimation corrections for extended time series. As I briefly said, most recently this is done with nearby fixed stations which use GPS (see Woppelmann 2009 linked in post) or DORIS satellite systems that are ultimately referenced back to and integrated with other geodetic systems using SLR (Satellite Laser Ranging) or VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry). These systems are all used to generate a stable geocentric reference frame such as the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). Once a sufficient number of vertically bench marked tidal stations are available (there are currently around 300) it is possible to “calibrate” (I’ll use this word rather than “correct”) the independent satellite altimeters as their raw data are in a sense “orbit referenced” to allow global coverage - which the tide stations obviously cannot give. It is also fair to suggest that the altimeters are not perfect and are subject to all sorts of error sources, however once calibrated, their output is independent of the tidal stations and not subject to ongoing trend correction using tidal station increases as you might be suggesting. Thus in turn they could then be used to estimate vertical offsets for tide station data where there is no nearby GPS station. Cross validation is certainly part of the process. This is not to say that all of the many sensors are not continually checked and calibrated, or that further corrections will not be made. However the possibility of a major error or drift having remained hidden over the past 17 years over several different satellite sensors is quoted as “unlikely”. On your point about recent acceleration, there are (of course) decadal changes in gradient throughout the historical tidal records, but the papers listed in the post give the rationale behind the reported recent increase being more significant than previous “decadal” changes. In general, it is obvious even by inspection that the shape of the long term average for the extended time series is an upwards curve, though of course this should not be substituted for careful analysis, and “long term” is relative! The “slowing down” was something I saw from commentators on blog sites, and was (I believe) based primarily on a couple of years worth of the then current Jason 1 data (from University of Colorado, the standard ASCII data outlet). There may well be references for this (or other previous accelerating or decelerating mini-trends in the data set), and if so I have not excluded these out of any deliberate bias, but simply because the mainstream consensus of expert opinion that I am exposed to (and have tried to communicate to a wider audience) has moved on. The best overview on the complete “system” is The Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS), Merrifield 2009, linked in the post. Also: OceanObs09 – Community White Paper. Observations of Sea Level Change: What have we learned and what are the remaining challenges?. Nerem 2009 -
Riccardo at 19:04 PM on 5 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel, good that you (almost) admitted that the temperature record isnot affected by the dropped stations. For the rest, i'm not defending the supposed "abandoned position" of good archive management (they were talking about a different issue than station dropping), I do not know how they do it. But what i'm interest in as a citizen that has to take decisions, or better, express opinions is the scientific value of their work. It proved to be at the very least good enough. Finally, I agree that all these discussions on the temperature records are bogus given that we now have independent satellite data set. The skeptic's beloved UAH dataset gives a decadal trend of 0.13 °C/decade, RSS 0.16 °C/decade. Both a strong confirmation of the quality of the surface stations datasets which should stop once and for all the chattering on this non-existent issue. P.S. There's no "do over" proposal due to archive mismanagement. Read the proposal they presented at the WMO meeting. -
Mike F at 18:17 PM on 5 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Question. Why do you think that the majority of the people, especially the more educated, choose to be ignorant of climate change. Or rather choose not to accept the possibility of climate change and won't adapt to it. i.e. Why are skeptic arguments so successful?
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