Jonger

I'm just not seeing a big increase in ch4 from Fracking.... It's certainly not showing up in monitoring data. China and Russia just signed a big natural gas agreement, the purpose is to phase out coal. I sure hope this works, it could directly reduce co2 emissions and reduce black carbon emission.

Perhaps this has been touched on earlier in this thread, but does anyone know what's caused the slowdown in methane rises from 2000-Present?

It is interesting. There is actually a downward trend from 1999 till 2005.

1750+ CH4 is pretty rare in the paleoclimate record. I would surmise that environmental forcings were simply "maxed" out in the 2000's. Looks like we have accelerated slightly in the last few years and especially in 2013. A more appropriate question to ask is if the recent Methane jump is a "glitch" or a real trend.

Interesting that the methane trend appears to have followed the rate of global temperature rise.

Perhaps methane is the key to the puzzle and not co2.

There are far more concerns with coal. Mercury, acid rain and localized pollution.

Most charts I see, show methane levels flattening out compared to the 1984-2000 level of rise.

This is an update of an earlier controversial paper. Paper has a clear discussion of methane emission estimates and does a good job of supporting the factors used. The main takeaway is that there is not much advantage for NG over coal when methane leaks are accounted for.

The link doesn't work for me.

I'm guessing it might show an increase in global methane concentrations paralleling the increased use of fracking? 

Nice to see this thread has resurfaced. Vergent, now over at Neven's Forum, has posted an interesting finding that the "blow out vents" which we worried about when they expanded from 10M to a 1 kM size are now reported to be 150 kM across.

A shame that some of the best posters have moved on to other sites.

Terry

Where is everyone posting over there. Its pretty dead from what I see. Is there a forum like this?

New study from University of Vancouver, and an understatement:

"Rather large percentages of existing species become committed to extinction."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/09/11/science-uvic-permafrost-carbon.html

Terry

These articles really do damage to the chicken or the egg co2 arguement in past warming from ice cores.

Did co2 cause the warming or did warming cause the co2.

Dispute my hypothesis.

For those of us waiting patiently for words of comfort from S&S (before they make their presentation at the AGU), a publication a that spurious rag Nature has the latest.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11392.html

With a translation for the layman at

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=8640

“Although this is a very remote region thousands of miles from the UK, considering the amount of carbon locked in this permafrost is twice the amount present in the atmosphere as CO2, the scale of the release of both CO2 and methane into the atmosphere will have a huge effect.

“This will have consequences for the temperatures all over the world.”

Was the take away quote.

Terry

So a warmed planet can release at least twice as much co2 than our current atmosphere holds? You do know what I'm thinking right?

Doesn't methane break down in 10yrs in the atmosphere?

Looking on the NOAA ESRL site at the data from the Barrow Observatory, they may be sampling the the first weak plumes of CH4 for this melt season. Here's the current in-situ hourly average CH4 plot for 2008 - present:

It appears that the recent increase in CH4 levels is continuing and that the current concentration at Barrow is around 1900 ppm. The one data point at 2200 ppb may be a software artifact because it doesn't show up on all plots. What I found interesting is that the brief spikes of anomalously high readings (which are described on the site as "thought to be not indicative of background conditions, and represent poorly mixed air masses influenced by local or regional anthropogenic sources or strong local biospheric sources or sinks", i.e. plumes) seem to be starting earlier this year than in most years on record. Typically this sort of data pattern occurs in late summer to early fall. It will be interesting to see what this summer's melt season brings.

Looks like a cow wandered next to the sensor.

There exists several times the global warming potential from mankind's burning of fossil fuels locked up in the frozen arctic environment. If it becomes warm enough up there due to AGW, then the melting tundra and sea floor should release methane in increasing quantity. Unlike the burning of fossil fuel, we have no control over that process and the threat is if this potential is unleashed the worst case global warming scenarios become inevitable and beyond our potential to control.

Or not.

You don't like my explanation for how all this false information was propagated?

What's yours.

It sounded rediculous and not worth responding to.

Let's see. Some Russian ship captains got together and told Russian and American authorities the the sea was boiling, just because they thought it would be a funny story to tell. The Russian and American authorities organized an emergency expedition on a nuclear icebreaker taking the worlds leading experts on methane releases, because they could play a huge joke on American Citizens. When they returned the expedition leader warned the world that what they had witnessed was much worse than anything they had ever experienced because he wanted to be sent on another Arctic cruise. The Americans brought some cows to Barrow and had them belch into the flasks being sent in for testing so that Barrow would become a tourist destination.

Have I got it right?

Wtf

The methane is in the sea floor. I am not sure what you meant there.

It is traped there.

Under pressure and lowertemps.

Unless the the sea ice regenerates the clathrates will break down and methane will continue to pour out at an accelerated rate with likely major releases that will have larger impacts on our climate.

As far as the billions of gigatons of methane being from plants that used to be there. Do you hace any thing to back this?

Where else do you believe the methane deposits came from? The earth is in a cool period right now and thats the only reason we even have ice caps.

That methane thats under the ice was probably the remains of plant/organic material that was left behind when there were actual plants growing in those spots.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter."

"This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter."

"Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

"Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost"

"Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year"

"In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast."

"on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."

How mutch more data do you need to see that this is not good?

How much methane was released when the last iceage ended and a size of ice several times larger melted then we have today. The ice we have at the poles today is a fraction of the original sheet.

Bug attacks are the next worry. This comes straight from wunderground.com Dr.Masters.

http://classic.wunde...um=2000&tstamp=