dabize

The milks gone bad.

Lol, that sucks..luckily as that flows around the planet we won't see such a sharp rises. but that is pretty ridiculous. I wonder how long it will take to reach Hawaii.

It will be interesting to see how much has been released.

What is worse is the MYI has been pushed away from the Russian side. Basically it's almost guaranteed the same places melt out next summer barring a volcano.

http://www.agu.org/j...p01-tn-350x.jpg

According to this chart from a paper reporting CH4 measurements from a WAIS core, the sharp rise appears to be well mixed.

Unclear if the stuff being reported from the ESCS (or Svalbard, for that matter) has had any influence on it.

I would have thought that much of the general post-industrial revolution increase (shown in the chart) is due to intensive livestock practices and possibly the release of natural gas from oil drilling/extraction operations.

Although it seems likely that CH4 played a major role in the 55mya event (and also the Permian/Triassic event BTW), we admittedly don't know how much CH4 increase from sites like this can trigger those types of runaway increases.

This is the real issue - whether current AGW-induced thawing of the region is setting us up for catastrophic increases in CH4 from shallow Arctic sources such as the ESCS, which certainly have the POTENTIAL to trigger self regenerating changes (based on the total amount sequestered in nearby areas (remember we are fairly close to huge peat deposits in weak permafrost in the Ob/Irtysh located just above sea level, so we don't require deep oceanic warming to mobilize lots of carbon here)). This is why the recent reports of locally massive releases (i.e. "fountains" on the scale that the OP reported - much larger than any reported previously) from that particular region are so disturbing.

IMHO, anyone who isn't concerned about the possibility of something really bad coming of this just isn't paying attention......but I am admittedly a Nervous Nellie who looks for oncoming traffic whenever I turn into an intersection.

The bottom line is the climate is not stable no matter how much we want it to be. Would 4C of warming by 2100 have catastrophic consequences? It sure would but that is unlikely to happen. The biggest debate in AGW vs skeptics is the climate sensitivity which has recently been gaining evidence of projections initially too high.

These two bolded statements don't exactly support each other. Just saying.

And how on Earth can you assert that such an increase is "unlikely to happen"? What are your grounds?

Findings such as the East Siberian CS methane release rates reported by the OP link suggest that such an increase is quite possible.

Is it actually "likely" (i.e p < 0.5)? I don't know, but even a 10% chance that something that "sure would be catastrophic" might happen justifies some actual preparations.

It certainly does not justify the doctrinaire and condescending dismissal of those concerned as "alarmists".

No its not...you are pointing out an article that tries to show that things are worse in Bangladesh because of global warming....does that mean we should root fro global cooling now which may make Bangladesh better off but drastically hurt other regions? The point of my post was that most of these articles only show how it could be bad for spots and that nobody ever benefits from warmer temps.

They basically sensationalize the Little Ice Age as this climate utopia and the current state we are in as so much "worse than we thought".

No they don't

You dragged the Little Ice Age in by the heels - and maybe you should read up on the LIA - it was a time of profound climatic variability, and it was this variability as much as anything that (presumably) caused much of the misery of the time (e.g. drought, crop failure in the 1300-1350 period leaving the population of Europe particularly vulnerable to the Great Plague of 1347-1353).

1. I'm pretty sure the Arctic is not boiling.

2. How did you arrive at that million percent factor?

3. The article comes from a source that is known to be tabloidish and alarmist. Just look at their silly title.

4. What historical records of methane release in that particular area, or even the Arctic as a whole, do we have to compare this to?

Jesus. This is pure idiocy.

Nothing but an emoticon of methane jumping a shark will do here........

There's always going to be spots in the world worse off with climate changing either direction. Its a poor analogy. Its a good thing we aren't as cold as 200 years ago, otherwise crop production would be a lot worse and we'd see more famine on the globe. That's another way to look at it. I can't imagine the amount of famine we'd have if some of those colder years during the LIA happened again now.

The point is that this is change in ONE direction, not either direction.

Talk about a poor analogy........

Clearly it's being used as a fear-mongering attention-grabber in the article, though. Its usage there really wasn't necessary.

We shall see what happens with the methane. That's the problem with the climate; there are so many feedbacks that feed other feedbacks, ect.

Jesus - you think a little emphasis isn't called for here?

What part of .....continuous fountains of methane being injected directly into the atmosphere over 10,000 square miles of seabed......... do you find so reassuring that it calls for such reticence?

And this in a country that waxes so hysterical at the slightest excuse that we have become tolerized to hyprebole.

We ARE SEEING what is happening with the methane.....

These guys, for instance, are living with the consequences of all this polite understatement of the consequences of AGW

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81079

And if that doesn't bother you, maybe the fact that we will be living with them - and lots more like them - as refugees because of AGW will.

Better brush up on your Bengali

DEADLY gases?!? That does sound bad.

Methane is deadly.

Your point?

"Retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas."

http://www.independe...as-6276134.html

It looks like the sst anomaly is destabilizing methane hydrate big time.

Could this be the missing feedback that explains why the models are underestimating the melt?

We've been waiting for this shoe to drop ever sent those guys went up to the Laptev two months ago (or whenever it was) to investigate initial reports of this. The acceleration mechanism for AGW has made its entrance and taken a bow.

I'll bet it make no impression whatever on our little cadre of "skeptics" here though. They'll dig up a bunch of emails from the Climatology Department of the University of Krasnoyarsk to demonstrate that nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

Sigh