Ta-Ra-Ra-BOOM-De-Ay! Part 3A

In Part 3, I included a graphic like this:

 



In the interim Sam Caranas, who does a heck of a lot of work on the Arctic Ice and Methane situation here on Blogger, has provided an updated graph, and it looks worse: note the sharp upturn between 2013 and 2014 the CH4 (Methane) content in our atmosphere has now taken off like a hockey-stick!

Source: Sam Caranas, Arctic News, "State of Extreme Emergency"

As I said before, hockey-stick graphs are VERY dangerous!

Ta-Ra-Ra-BOOM-De-Ay! Part 3

Well more methane is seeping out of the ocean floor not only in the Arctic but also in the Atlantic now, off the USA East Coast.

Methane Monster’s Grumbling Goes Global: 570 Methane Plumes Discovered on Atlantic Ocean Sea Floor - from Robertscribbler.

(snip)

Greenhouse gas concentrations spike — heating the atmosphere and the deep ocean after a period of glaciation during which vast stores of carbon accumulated. Massive volumes of this carbon lay dormant — trapped in frozen ground and in clathrates on the sea bed. As the ocean and airs warm, these carbon stores release causing a massive spike of additional greenhouse gasses to hit the atmosphere and setting off ever-more-rampant heating. The cycle continues until much of these carbon stores out-gas, pushing the Earth into a hothouse state.
Sound chillingly familiar?

What I’ve just described is the process that most scientists believe occurred during the worst mass extinction event in the geological past — the Permian Extinction. A hothouse event that killed 95% of life in the oceans and 70% of life on land. And what humans are now doing to the Earth’s airs and waters through CO2 and related greenhouse gas emissions may well be shockingly similar.

(snip)

Unfortunately, the vast carbon store in the Arctic is not the only potential source of heating feedback carbon release. For around the world, upon and beneath the ocean sea bed, billions of tons of methane lay stored in clathrate structures. These stores are separate from the large carbon deposits in the Arctic. But they are no less dangerous.

In 2012, Nature issued a study that found a store of clathrates composing billions of tons of methane was now destabilizing off the US East Coast. The study predicted large-scale releases in the multi-gigaton range from the southern region of the East Coast methane clathrate store due both to changes in the Gulf Stream circulation and to warming bottom waters — both impacts set off by human-caused climate change. The study was uncertain how fast such a release could occur, but noted that the eventual release was likely due to wide-scale clathrate degradation associated with ocean bottom warming.

And the amount of methane in our atmosphere is increasing faster now... last year it was about 1825 ppb; now it's around 1836 ppb. Note the rate of increase was lower prior to 2011.

Source - Sam Caranas (Arctic News)
Notation in blue is mine.

This means the amount of methane that is in the atmosphere is increasing and could take off like a rocket - creating a hockey stick graph! And everyone knows, or should know, that hockey stick graphs charting realtime phenomenon, like a real estate bubble, a population explosion, etc., are very, very dangerous! It indicates that things will soon go haywire. And we can't afford to let that happen to our global climate. Earth is the only home we have.

Ta Ra Ra BOOM Deeay! Part 2

From Robertscribbler's article "Large Methane Plumes Discovered on Laptev Continental Slope Boundary: Evidence of Possible Methane Hydrate Release":

Over the past few years, the Arctic has been experiencing an invasion.

Emerging from the Gulf Stream, a pulse of warmer than normal water propagated north past Iceland and into the Barents Sea. There, it dove beneath the surface fresh water and retreating sea ice, plunging to a depth of around 200-500 meters where it concentrated, lending heat to the entire water column. Taking a right hand turn along the Siberian Continental Shelf, it crossed through the mid water zones of the Kara. Finally, it entered the Laptev and there it abutted against the downward facing slopes of the submarine continental region.

As the water temperatures at these depths warmed, researchers began to wonder if they would trigger the destabilization of methane hydrate stores locked  in deeper waters along the shelf boundary. And, now, a new expedition may have uncovered evidence that just such an event is ongoing.

And here's a photo of methane bubbles bubbling up from the slope itself!

Source: Stockholm University via Robertscribbler.

Ta Ra Ra BOOM Deeay!

The methanc clathrates under the East Siberian Arctic Continental Shelf (ESAS), its slope into the deep and even under the Permafrost in Siberia are destabilizing. On land, four "sinkholes" with "levees" have formed, explosively like a the champagne under a popped cork, or even with a fiery explosion.

And the Global Warming demons will be singing "Ta Ra Ra BOOM Deeay!" as they ride up the rising gas bubbles once the clathrates really belch. Probably past 2100, but who knows?

As Robertscribbler reports in his blog article, "Is This the Compost Bomb’s Smoking Gun? Second Mysterious Hole Found in Yamal Russia."

Yamal, Russia — a stretch of tundra flats and peat bogs stretching as far as the eye can see before terminating into the chill waters of the Kara. A rather stark and desolate place, one that was mostly unknown until a massive and strange hole appeared in the earth there last week. Since that time, the strange hole has been the butt of every kind of wild speculation and controversy.

The hole itself was an alien feature. “We haven’t seen anything like this before,” would be an entirely accurate statement. All about the hole was a large pile of debris — overturned earth, huge chunks of soil piled up in a signature very familiar to the ejecta of a meteor impact crater.
Approaching the hole edge, we came to a gradual slope that proceeded downward for about 40 feet at about a 35 degree incline. Along the surface of this incline, both the unfrozen soil cap and the frozen permafrost were visible.

But it wasn’t until we hit the bottom edge of this incline that we encountered the strangest feature of all — a sheer cliff, rounded in a shape like the smooth bore of a gun, and plunging straight down through icy permafrost for about another hundred and twenty feet before revealing a basement cavern slowly filling with melt.

It’s a combination of features that appears to be one half impact crater and one half sink hole.

A poster by the name of Bernard says two more holes have opened up in Siberia: Antipayuta, Taz district, and Nosok, Krasnoyarsk region. For more info, click here, scroll down and click here.

Second Yamal crater.

A "sinkhole" with levees! 

(Source: The Siberian Times via Robertscribbler)