Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Warm water extends from Laptev Sea to North Pole

The NOAA NESDIS image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies of well over 1ºC extending to the North Pole.


The image below gives a world view, showing SST anomalies at the top end of the scale in the Laptev Sea.


The top end of the scale on the above image is 5ºC (or 9ºF).



The visualizations above and below uses a much higher scale. Even this higher-end scale doesn't appear to fully capture the dire situation we are in.


Above image shows warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait and from the North Atlantic. For months to come, the Gulf Stream will keep pushing warm water into the Arctic Ocean (i.e. water that is warmer than the water in the Arctic Ocean). It takes some time (i.e. months) for the warm water from the north Atlantic to arrive in the Arctic Ocean.

Last year, methane emissions started to become huge in October and this lasted for some six months. The image below, from an earlier post, shows methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean on October 16/17, 2013.


The image below, from another earlier post, shows methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean on October 31, 2013.


The image below, from yet another earlier post, shows methane levels as high as 2662 parts per billion on November 9, 2013.


This year, there is even more ocean heat present, especially in the north Atlantic and the north Pacific. On September 29, 2014, methane levels as high as 2641 parts per billion were recorded and it looks like worse is yet to come.


The video below, Sea floor methane hydrate climate hazard, is an extract produced by Peter Carter from a presentation by Miriam Kastner, uploaded 7 August 2008 at Youtube.



The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.


Monday, September 22, 2014

350,000 Marchers = 50 Parts Per Million

People's Climate March, New York, September 21, 2014, photo by Cindy Snodgrass

by Nathan Currier

How big a deal was the march in Manhattan yesterday? One of the organizers was 350.org, a group started by Bill McKibben based on a paper by climate scientist James Hansen which stated that we should aim for about 350 parts per million (ppm) CO2. We are currently at about 400ppm, so we need to move "only" about 50ppm in the opposite direction from our rapid growth, which hit a frightening 3ppm clip last year.

It will take a huge effort, and few alive today will live to see it (short of large-scale engineering), but it is interesting to ponder the minute change this represents in the air -- a shift of just 5 one-thousandths of one percent (.005 percent) of the atmosphere! That is one of the fascinating things in climate science, how such a minute change in our atmosphere could potentially have such an impact on the energy balance of our whole planet.

Keep this in mind if you are trying to contemplate how big a deal it is that some 350,000 people came out into the streets of Manhattan, the capital of capitalism, the cultural heart of the nation where manufactured denial has most stymied action. That's because this happens to be exactly the same proportion of the 7 billion members of humanity, 5 one-thousandths of one percent, as that 50ppm is a shift in the composition of the air. Further, some have estimated the real number of marchers as 400,000, and if the global estimates swell equally, then globally about the same proportion were marching as the CO2 growth since industrialization is a shift in atmospheric composition. In a way, all those marching were just a trace, and as soon as we dissipated into streets and subways afterwards, quickly outnumbered by people going about their everyday lives, that seemed obvious, but in another way, how monumental the right little trace can become!

And speaking of powerful little traces, methane is even far less concentrated in the air than CO2, about 220 times less so, but there was really some methane floating around the Manhattan air yesterday! No, I don't mean all those leaky pipes in the city that have led local tests to sometimes register incredibly high ambient readings of the greenhouse gas. I mean that among the marchers anti-fracking signs often seemed to outnumber all other "sub-theme" signs. This is a fascinating phenomenon, as some of us have felt that, since we all ultimately must live in the here and now, and since one cannot impact the climate we have here and now very effectively through CO2 mitigation, yet one can only gain practical political traction by dealing with that here and now, so one of the best ways to gauge seriousness in getting movement going on climate would be to watch for meaningful action on methane. In a sense, if you want people to start climbing up a very steep ladder, you need to give them a nice low first step, and that first climate step would be methane. As Robert Watson, the previous Chair of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put it succinctly, rapidly cutting methane, "would demonstrate to the world that we can do something to quickly slow climate change. We need to get moving to cool the planet's temperature. Methane is the most effective place for us to start."

The Manhattan climate march also provided a fitting example of how getting the big slow march of change rolling can be frustrating: for those in the back it took two hours to start any movement at all, and then another two hours to reach Columbus Circle, its ostensible starting point. Similarly inevitable drags on climate mitigation are making rapid methane action all the more important. And uncertainties in near-term climate change, with a rising potential for high-impact lower-probability events to cause abrupt heating (like non-human methane emissions in the arctic taking off more quickly than models predict), means that ignoring the near-term climate for too long could ultimately prove fatal to all our best intentions. So it's fascinating to see an interest in methane growing from the grass roots, even if it is still largely (and erroneously) confined to the fracking issue at this point. Let's hope that the interest in this merest little trace gas of our air -- since industrialization it has risen by about 1.1 ppm, a shift of about 1.1 ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the atmosphere! -- sparks soon. The group 1250 was initially intended to provide a kind of autonomous offshoot to McKibben's 350, in order to help generate that spark, but McKibben himself soon said that he "had his hands full with CO2" and did not at the time send along to his followers the group's initial petition drive, which then quickly languished. But if methane interest does reach that critical concentration, and that spark is provided, you know what happens next: that's when climate action goes boom.

Above text was earlier posted by Nathan Currier at the HuffingtonPost 

Below follow further photos by Cindy Snowgrass of the People's Climate March.





















Thursday, September 18, 2014

Warm water flowing into Arctic Ocean

by Harold Hensel

For the first time in thousands of years, warm water is flowing into the Arctic Ocean. Warm water from the deep ocean is showing up on surface images. There is no way to put this into the context of 'normal.' Historic temperatures have kept the Arctic frozen on an even keel for thousands of years. Even if there was a 'natural cycle' it has been completely overridden by the astonishing amount of pollution that is going into the atmosphere.


Over 90 percent of Earth's energy imbalance has been going into the oceans, almost unnoticed by people keeping track of the temperatures in the atmosphere. The warmer ocean water is going through the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea, Barents Sea, East Siberian Sea and worst of all, the Laptev Sea.

The Gakkel Ridge crosses the Arctic Ocean from Greenland to the Laptev Sea, see earlier post
There are methane hydrate concentrations in all of these areas up to 1,500 feet deep for miles and miles. There are fractures here that give mantel methane a route to the surface that have been safely sealed by ice. The hydrates and seals are thawing.

In 2013, huge amounts of methane erupted over the Gakkel Ridge and
the Laptev Sea
in October, with levels as high as 2662 ppb on November 9.
In 2014, levels over 2400 ppb were recorded on September 14, 15 and 16.

On the Greenland side, warm water is flowing into the Arctic from the Labrador, Greenland and Norway seas. The international SWERUSs-C3 expedition on the icebreaker Oden is recording 'mega flares' of methane. There are many factors involved in warming the Arctic Ocean, but warm water flowing into it is one of the worst.

Harold Hensel
Cedar Rapids

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Climate Accord New York September 2014

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. has made some (small) progress limiting the amounts of greenhouse gases that states emit, e.g. through Environmental Protection Agency limits on carbon dioxide emitted by power plants.

Given that greenhouse gases do spread all over the globe, the U.S. must also support action abroad to reduce levels of greenhouse gases.

At the upcoming Climate Summit in New York, September 23, President Obama will have a good opportunity to do so.

President Obama can and should support an accord for nations to jointly commit to bold action, including the imposition of fees on fossil fuel exported to nations that fail to commit to such action.

Where necessary, World Trade Organization rules should be agreed to be adjusted in order to accommodate such fees.

An accord on export fees can help U.S. exporters remain competitive and avoid repercussions. Such fees will also help make importing nations impose fees domestically, as they will not want to miss out on the revenues from such fees.

Revenues from such fees are best held in a trust fund and they are best used exclusively to finance international projects, such as efforts to save the sea ice in the Arctic and R&D into ways to decompose methane. As more nations impose fees domestically and accept responsibility to participate in international projects, such export fees can phase themselves out.

The People's Climate March will take place on September 21, starting 11:30 am from Central Park West (between 65th and 86th streets). Whether or not you're taking part in the march, consider supporting the Climate Plan. If you print out above image, you could make a cardboard sign. Over the coming days, photos of people holding up such a sign can be posted and shared at facebook and, if you add some lines saying you like the idea, they will be considered for display at the Arctic-news blog. You can also make it your profile picture on facebook during the remainder of the month to get a chance to be mentioned as a supporter.  Thanks in advance.

Update of Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly below:



Thanks to all who liked, tagged and shared the top image. Two examples of how the message is shared are highlighted below.

Sheila Chambers at facebook                             

A.Randomjack at Google+