Ice breaking melt record? (Svalbard, Irene Quaile)

The Rio games have come to an end. Summer is drawing to a close here in Germany. It feels more like autumn today, cool with heavy rainshowers. But there’s a heatwave around the corner after what most people agree has been a very strange summer.

July followed in the record-breaking trend of the earlier months of the year, being the hottest month ever recorded on the planet.

Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry

Here in Germany, August has been cooler than average so far, but that is about to change. And it has been wet, wet, wet here. My colleague went out to visit an organic winemaker and came back with depressing pictures of mouldy grapes. The farmers around the village where I live are complaining of low harvests of fruit and grain because of irregular rain and temperature developments this spring and summer.

My own tomatoes are looking pretty droopy, the leaves covered with pseudo-mildew and definitely not as productive as in recent years. It has been too cold and too wet at critical times this summer. The only positive thing that springs to mind – from a selfish, human point of view – about the effect of this year’s weird summer weather, is the lack of pesky wasps trying to get a share of the plum cake (the plums, at least, still seem to be coping). It seems it has been too wet for the wasps this year. So is this just a one-off or the shape of things to come as climate change disrupts our weather patterns?

Don’t know what to make of this weather. (Pic. I.Quaile, Bonn)

Arctic sea ice – going, going, gone?

There have been plenty of wet days to sit indoors and read the papers and follow the twitter links and online media. As far as my pet subject the Arctic is concerned, there has been no shortage of reading material in this connection. Unfortunately, it is anything but happy reading.

The Guardian seems to have a worrying Arctic story every day at the moment. Kudos for bringing so much attention to a topic that should concern us all. Here’s hoping it is not just a matter of preaching to the converted.

The paper has been giving a lot of attention to the new book by Peter Wadhams. A Farewell to Ice.

Ice close up — too beautiful to lose (Pic: I.Quaile)

The book appears on September 1^st , so the series of articles can be seen as a kind of advertising campaign. But given the urgency of the topics, it is good to see a scientific book attracting so much attention from an influential newspaper and one of the world’s most popular online sites.

Wadhams was director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge from 1987 to 1992 and has been professor of ocean physics at Cambridge since 2001.

I have heard him speak and interviewed him in recent years and been impressed by the urgency of his message about the decline of Arctic sea ice.

Don’t panic?

Of course there are those in the scientific world who say he exaggerates, and are less willing to put a date on just when we will see an ice-free Arctic. That is, of course, in itself, also a matter of definition.

“Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice” is the headline of an interview with Wadhams published in the Guardian on Sunday, August 21^st.

The paper notes that Wadham said on several occasions that summer sea ice would disappear by the middle of this decade, which it hasn’t. He insists he is not being alarmist, and qualifies his claim:

“The overall trend is a very strong downward one (…) Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship. There will still be about a million square kilometres of ice in the Arctic in summer but it will be packed into various nooks and crannies along the Northwest Passage and along bits of the Canadian coastline. Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.”

Less ice, more shipping (Pic. I.Quaile, Tromso)

No Thames Barrier for Bangladesh

Wadhams explains why this should be a cause for concern. He sums up the albedo affect, explained on the Ice Blog many times before. The white ice cover reflects heat back into space. Darker water absorbs and retains the heat. He also describes the Arctic sea ice as an “air-conditioning system”, cooling the winds over Siberia and Greenland. Without this he says these cold areas would be heated up further, and “these effects could add 50% to the impact of global warming that is produced by rising carbon emissions”. That is a staggering figure. Wadhams cites ice loss from Greenland at 300 cubic kilometers a year. Another massive amount. He thinks the IPCC’s prediction that sea level will rise by 60 to 90 centimetres this century is far too low. One to two metres – AT BEST – is far more likely, he says.

The image he uses to indicate the consequences of the increasing storm surges which would be likely to occur is a powerful one:

“We may be able to raise the Thames barrier in Britain but in Bangladesh, it just means more and more people will be drowned.”

We come back to the old maxim: “what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic”. More and more people in non-polar regions are coming to recognize that what happens in the icy regions of our world affects the climate of the planet as a whole.

Not too bothered? Svalbard reindeer (Pic: I.Quaile)

Legacy for generations

Wadhams goes into the problem of methane escaping from melting permafrost, an additional warming factor – but also stresses that it is the CO2 which will have the longer-lasting effect, as it stays in the climate system for 100 years – or even, according to some, for far longer than that.

“There is no such thing as a safe emission rate of carbon dioxide. That is why I am despondent about us ever being able to cut carbon emissions.”

That is a very worrying thing to hear. And of course Wadhams is not the only one who thinks so. He says we will have to get into some kind of geo-engineering to extract CO2 from the atmosphere in a big way, but sees no signs of a technology that could really be effective.

“As far as I can see, it will have to take the form of some sort of device into which you pump air at one end and you get air without carbon dioxide coming out the other end. It can be done, I am sure, but at the moment we do not have such a device. However, without something like that I cannot see how we are going to deal with the carbon dioxide that is getting into the atmosphere. We are going to have to rely on a technology that has not yet been developed. That is a measure of the troubles that lie ahead for us. I think humanity can do it, but I would feel much better if I saw governments investing in such technology”.

Measuring missions from melting permafrost, Zackenberg, Greenland (Pic: I.Quaile)

Talk, discuss, consider…

Hm. I fear climate change is progressing far too fast for a magic new technology to be developed in time. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was meeting in Geneva last week to do the groundwork for a special report on the likely impacts of and pathways towards limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As I tried to follow what was happening in the hope of finding something exciting or encouraging, I found myself increasingly disillusioned to read that this was only a “scoping meeting”.

At the Paris climate conference last December, the IPCC was asked to prepare this report, after the conference agreed to “limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5ºC.”

But the report will only be delivered in 2018 and, as the IPCC media briefing puts it, “in time for a ‘facilitative dialogue’ that will take place that year to take stock of progress under the Paris Agreement.”

So what were the international experts in Geneva actually doing? “Discussing the outline and structure of the new report”, it seems.

The outline they approved at the meeting can now be submitted to the next main IPCC session in October (17.-20) in Bangkok. Then it will be published and discussed…. And – no, not the report itself. The authors have not even been nominated yet, this is just the structure.

Am I the only one who finds the pace of planetary progress on the climate front – er – “sub-optimal”, to use an English translation of a German phrase which started out as a kind of joke, or irony, but has become the kind of understatement which in fact effectively expresses definite disapproval?

Meanwhile, I am getting my raingear out for the kind of tropical downpour expected this afternoon before getting out my sun dress for the 30 something degrees expected tomorrow here at the heart of Europe.

Meanwhile, that Arctic ice keeps melting away at Olympic record-breaking pace – and that giant cruiseship, the Crystal Serenity gets set to take advantage of it and transport more than 1,700 people through the Northwest Passage. But that’s a story for another iceblog day.

Laura Brosius collects methane from Eight Mile Lake using an “umbrella trap” (Pic: I.Quaile, 2008)

When the Ice Blog was launched in 2008, one of the first posts from a trip to Alaska entitled “Ice-Capades and Alaska baking with methane?” included a visit to frozen-over “Eight-mile Lake” in the Denali national park, where scientists Katey Walter and Laura Brosius were measuring methane emissions from melting ice and permafrost. The young “climate ambassadors” I was travelling with helped her to set up “umbrella traps” and capture bubbles of methane coming to the surface. The “proof of the pudding” was setting a match to the gas and watching it catch light. An interesting experiment.  But the subject has huge wide-ranging implications.  Methane is also a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than CO2. Walter and others have since recorded numerous methane seeps in Alaska and Greenland. As global temperatures increase, the permafrost thaws, potentially releasing the gas stored both in the permafrost on land and in the form of methane hydrates under water.

Since that Alaskan trip, methane has beconme an increasingly “hot topic”,  with more research being conducted and data collected. The reservoir of methane stored under the Arctic ice and permafrost is huge.  And there is increasing scientific evidence that with the world warming, this reservoir is not going to stay there for ever. The concentration of atmospheric methane has increased dramatically in the last 200 years – especially in the Arctic. In 2008, scientists came up with a scenario where up to 50 gigatonnes of methane could be released abruptly from the East Siberia Arctic Shelf (ESAS) because of the melting of permafrost which had hitherto kept it safely sealed in.

You can see the methane bubbles rising. (Pic I. Quaile)

Fountains of methane

In 2011, a joint US-Russian expedition surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia was surprised to observe fountains of methane rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed. At that time, scientists expressed concern that with the melting of Arctic sea ice and permafrost, the huge methane stores might be released over a relatively short period of time.

The SWERUS-C3 expedition headed by Örjan Gustafsson from Stockholm University is currently underway in the Laptev Sea, where they have discovered “vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor of the Laptev continental slope”. Gustavsson writes in his blog that he was surprised by this. He speculates that it could have its origins in collapsing “methane hydrates”, clusters of methane trapped in frozen water due to high pressure and low temperatures.

“While there has been much speculation about the vulnerability of regular marine hydrates along the continental slopes of the Arctic rim, very few actual observations of methane releases due to collapsing marine hydrates on the Arctic slope have been made”, Gustafsson writes.  He thinks a “tongue” of relatively warm Atlantic water, presumably intruding across the Arctic Ocean at 200-600 meters depth could have something to do with the methane seeps. Some evidence shows this water mass has recently become warmer.

“As this warm Atlantic water, the last remnants of the Gulf stream, propagates eastward along the upper slope of the East Siberian margin, it may lead to the destabilization of methane hydrates on the upper portion of the slope”, Gustafsson writes.

Costly bubbles

In 2013,  a paper published in the journal Nature put a price tag on the possibility of the Arctic’s methane being released. The experts suggest it could trigger costs of 60 trillion US dollars. Normally, as soon as money is involved, public interest tends to rise. The report should really have brought  the subject of “Arctic methane hydrates” out of the science corner onto the economic and political agenda. Which is, of course, where it has to be, if there is any chance of limiting the Arctic thaw by halting global warming.

Investigating the huge amount of methane captured under Arctic permafrost. (Pic I. Quaile)

There are scientists who insist that such a scenario is not likely. Let me refer you here to a detailed analysis of the scientific literature on the subject published by Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, in EarthInsight hosted by the Guardian, in 2013. He points out that none of the scientists  who reject the plausibility of the scenario are experts in the Arctic, and specifically the ESAS. On the other hand, there is an emerging consensus among ESAS specialists based on continuing fieldwork, he writes, “highlighting a real danger of unprecedented quantities of methane venting due to thawing permafrost”.

Rhetoric, polemics – but accuracy please!

Ahmed comes down on the side of the Arctic experts who are highly concerned about the risk of methane being set free in large quantities. That is already clear from the title of his article “Seven facts you need to know about the Arctic methane timebomb”. Sub-headed: “Dismissals of catastrophic methane danger ignore robust science in favour of outdated mythology of climate safety.” Yes, you could say that is tendentious. It is certainly rhetorically powerful.

Perhaps that accounts in part for the reaction I got when I tweeted the link to his analysis recently as interesting background to the ongoing debate on Arctic methane. One response told me to stop “fear mongering” and referred to an article describing methane as a “climate boogeyman”. (In connection with studies on methane leaks from natural gas production). Aha. Emotions are running high – on both sides.

Still – Ahmed’s article is based on a thorough analysis of both sides of the arguments. It seems this cannot be said of a piece on news.com.au, headlined “Are Siberia’s methane blow-holes the first warning sign of unstoppable climate change?”. The article links three giant craters which have been found in Siberia to the scientific research of Jason Box, a renowned glaciology professor and Greenland expert, starting with the tantalizing question:

“What do three enormous craters in the Siberian wastelands have to do with a terrified American climate scientist? Methane. And that’s something to scare us all”.

In fact, as Jason Box @climate_ice tweeted to his followers, the Arctic expert’s research and concern have nothing to do with the giant craters. He tweets:

“News piece juxtaposes Siberian holes with my carbon release concerns but I have no idea about the holes”

Citing the concerns and findings of reputed scientists alongside other reported explanations of the Siberian craters as “hellmouths”, “gateways to the undead” or “aliens” does nothing for serious scientific attempts to monitor climate change in the Arctic or inform politicians and businesses about the scenarios for which the world has to prepare. Now if those of a skeptical persuasion were to take this kind of article as “fear mongering” or the “climate boogeyman”, I could just about understand it. Please, let us not detract from the value of scientific monitoring and analysis, complex computer modeling and genuine concern on the part of a lot of experts who know very well what they are talking about. And let us not bring the media into disrepute for misrepresenting the views of scientists like Jason Box by taking his findings and statements out of context in the interest of a sensationalist story. We do not need to mix fact with fiction and create “boogeymen”. The huge body of scientific findings out there is already scary enough.

Melting ice off Svalbard, pictured 2011

The UN weather agency WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) has confirmed that the Arctic’s sea ice melted at a record pace in 2012, the ninth-hottest year on record. With just 3.4 million square kilometres (1.32 million square miles) during the August to September melting season, the sea ice cover was a full 18 percent less than the previous low set in 2007. The WMO’s Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said this was a “disturbing sign of climate change”, and pointed to the link between climate change and extreme weather events.

Meanwhile, a special briefing was called at the White House to discuss the possibility of the Arctic becoming ice free in the summer within just TWO years. Nafeed Ahmed, director of the “Institute for Policy Research & Development” headlines his post for the “Guardian“: “White House warned on imminent Arctic ice death spiral”. He describes the meeting, including NASA’s acting chief scientist Gale Allen, the director of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon as “the latest indication that US officials are increasingly concerned about the international and domestic security implications of climate change”.

10 Arctic specialists were called in to advise the US government, including marine scientist Professor Carlos Duarte, currently director of the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia. I met and interviewed Prof. Duarte back in 2011 at the Arctic Frontiers conference, when he worked with the Spanish Council for Scientific Research.  At that time, he was already calling for urgent action and warning of the danger of “climate tipping points”, including the melt of the Arctic sea ice.  His conclusions are based on research which was presented in an article in Nature Climate Change last year.

The West Australian newspaper quotes Prof. Duarte as saying the “snowballing situation would prove as hard to slow down as a runaway train”.  He told the paper the ice melt was accelerating faster than any of the models could predict, and the prospect of an Arctic Ocean free of ice had been brought forward to 2015, compared with a prediction in 2007 that at least a third of the normal sea ice extent would remain in summer in 2100. When I spoke to him in 2011, the US navy was already assuming a date of 2050 and Duarte said he expected it to be even earlier.

Professor Carlos Duarte on Arctic Tipping Points

Prof Duarte also warned of the increasing danger of melting methane. Let me quote a little from the interview:

DUARTE: “We know from the history of ice covering the planet along geological time scales that ice is strongly a non-linear element in the earth’s system. It’s one of the components that show very rapid, very abrupt changes and tipping points. So we expect that once the ice will be lost quickly from the Arctic and also from the shelves in Greenland, then other forces will be set in motion, and many forces will be set in motion by loss of ice. One of them is the release of methane hydrates from the shallow continental shelves, mostly around Siberia, and those are molecules of methane that are trapped into ice in the sediments of the continental shelves and in the permafrost on land. So if this ice melts, this methane can be released abruptly and suddenly. And deposits of methane trapped in the shallow sediments of the Arctic amount to about five times the greenhouse power that humans have set in motion through burning fossil fuels. So if this five times what we have released in 150 years is released within a few years, that would be detrimental to the climate system and it could lead to a very rapid warming, and could again set in motion other forces like increased freshwater discharge to  the Arctic, which has already increased by 30 percent. And this involves a greater export of fresh water and buoyancy to the Atlantic, which may affect global circulation and global currents, and those in turn will affect regional climates  also further south to the sub-Arctic region. Also,  warmer temperatures are leading to dieback of the boreal forest and also the peat deposits in the boreal region are drying up to the extent that they can catch fire.”

(IRENE QUAILE:  How close are we?)

DUARTE: “We very much know what the threshold and the tipping point for the release of methanes will be, because the methane is kept in the hydrates, deposits in the salty sediments by ice, frozen sediments, and we know the freezing point of salty sediments may be around  minus 1 degree. So when the temperature of water in the summer goes well above freezing point, the hydrates will defrost and the methane will be released. So what we need to monitor is the temperature of the shallow waters in the Siberian shelf and other shallow waters in the Arctic, in the Canadian region as well, and see how close they’re getting to temperatures of 3 and 4 degrees, which will be those that will lead to melting of the hydrates.”

Scary? The interview, it seems, is as relevant as ever, the Professor’s warnings more urgent. I wonder what it feels like to be called in to the White House to brief the government of a country that is both a key player in the Arctic and a top emitter of the greenhouse gases that are causing the melt? On the one hand it must be satisfying for the scientists to know they are finally being heard. But there must also be some frustration about the extent of dangerous climate change that had to be set in motion first. Has the Arctic ice already reached a “tipping point”?

Let me close with another quote from that interview with Carlos Duarte:

DUARTE: “Unfortunately society is much more mobilised by opportunities than by risks. So the discourses and warnings of risks actually almost lead to inaction by society, whereas the sight of opportunities encourages society to set themselves in motion. So the opportunities for economic growth in the Arctic have dominated the discourse and the actions by society and policy makers. Those opportunities are new navigation routes across the Arctic, and the exploitation of oil, gas and fisheries, that were not accessible just a few years ago. The paradox in this is that the Arctic countries recognise that the forces that are improving access to these resources is actually climate change and that the reason for this climate change is the burning of fossil fuels by humans.  Arctic nations themselves are responsible for 26% of the release of these greenhouse gases and are taking advantage of these opportunities, which will involve greater emissions of greenhouse gases.  (…) I think there should be a balance between the economic growth these opportunities could bring about and the economic losses, they may bring about, which I don’t think have been quantified.”

I have been concerned about the effect of melting permafrost on the climate for quite some time, not least in the wake of encounters with scientists working in Greenland (this picture is Zackenberg, Greenland, 2009) and Alaska. Now research results published by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSDIC) in Boulder, Colorado are indicating that there could be a “tipping point” or a “starting point”, as Professor Kevin Schaefer prefers to call it, in less than 20 years. That means a point when the vast areas of permafrost in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe go from being a “carbon sink” to a carbon source. The study indicates as much as two-thirds of the carbon frozen into the permafrost could be released.
There’s more info on the NSIDC website and on the ips news website, based on an interview with Prof. Schaefer. Not happy reading, but without big reductions in emissions, it will probably be impossible to prevent this. On top of that come the methane emissions, not included in the study. Methane is much more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.