Siberian lakes burp “time-bomb” greenhouse gas (doom)

[Barrett808]

Siberian lakes burp “time-bomb” greenhouse gas
Submitted by Marie Gilbert
Phone: [phone]

FAIRBANKS, Alaska--Frozen bubbles in Siberian lakes are releasing methane, a greenhouse gas, at rates that appear to be five times higher than previously estimated and acting as a positive feedback to climate warming, said Katey Walter, in a paper published today in the journal Nature.

Walter's project is the first time this type of bubbling has been accurately quantified.

"We realized that our previous estimates were missing a very large and important component of lake emissions--in these bubbles were the dominant source of methane from lakes," said Walter, an International Polar Year post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

According to Walter, her team’s calculations increase the present estimate of methane emissions from northern wetlands by between 10 and 63 percent.

Walter studied a unique type of permafrost in Siberia, called yedoma, which contains an estimated 500 gigatons of carbon, largely in the form of ancient dead plant material.

"This material has been locked up in permafrost since the end of the last ice age," Walter said. "Now it is being released into the bottom of lakes, providing microbes a banquet from which they burp out methane as a byproduct of decomposition."

"Permafrost models predict significant thaw of permafrost during this century, which means that yedoma permafrost is like a time bomb waiting to go off - as it continues to thaw, tens of thousands of teragrams of methane can be released to the atmosphere enhancing climate warming," Walter said. "This newly recognized source of methane is so far not included in climate models."

Using remote sensing, aerial surveys and year-round, continuous measurements Walter and colleagues developed a new method of measuring ebullition (bubbling) point sources and used it to quantify methane emissions from two thaw lakes in North Siberia.

As they walked across the frozen lakes they mapped locations and types of discrete methane bubbling trapped in the ice. By placing bubble traps over these spots and under the water the researchers could get daily measurements of the volume of methane released by the bubbles.

Walter will continue her work on methane for her UAF International Polar Year post-doctoral project which will provide the first circumpolar estimate of methane emissions for arctic lakes, linking process-based field surveys with remote sensing analysis.

Contact: Katey Walter, post-doctoral fellow, UAF Institute of Arctic Biology at [phone] x222 or via e-mail at [e-mail]. Marie Gilbert, public information officer, UAF Institute of Arctic Biology, at [phone] or via e-mail at [e-mail].

http://www.uaf.edu/news/headlines/20060907084941.html

Mods: This is a press release from the University of Alaska, so I posted the whole thing.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Tell this to those ignorant Bush GOP Guys...they don't even believe

GW exists....they don't care...they think they going to get Raptured...a fantasy way of dealing with reality...

[grizmaster]

2. great informative piece

[iconoclastic cat]

3. Not to make light of this, but it's not really a "burp," in my analysis. n

[skids]

15. Nor mine (see sig) n/t

[lvx35]

4. Oh my God this stuff scares me so much.

More than Osama with a nuke. Ive been studying loads of math this quarter, especially models of complex systems like nature....There are SO many cases where a small x factor can multiply something else to RADICALLY blow a system into something else entirely, and the fact is that we 0 guaruntees of this not happening with all the things released now that have NEVER in the history of ALL life been released into the eco-system.

[Gregorian]

6. This is a symptom.

The cause has to do with large numbers. You will never see an original post on population, on this forum. Or any other forum, for that matter. But what curve should scare you is the exponential growth curve of human population. But it gets almost no attention. In small numbers, none of these problems exist. Of course we're stuck with the population that is here. But complete silence is asking for death. We can very easily go from six billion to nine billion in the blink of an eye. Things are just beginning to slow down a bit. But the lack of outrage and attention has been overwhelming.

We need to speak up about it. We need to educate people about it. And we need to put limits on family sizes. Yes, I said that last part. To some, that makes me a monster. The real monster is about to wake up. Over a billion people are just beginning to turn on the hot water, and start their engines. Global warming is in it's mid-life.

[markam]

7. 200,000 new people

every day.

[Recursion]

21. Some people, with the upbringing they have, can't imagine

I know that sounds condescending but it's true. I have a friend who has lived his whole life in Missouri and never gone farther from there than Oklahoma. He's never been to a city bigger than St. Louis. I was once driving across MO with him and he mentioned, looking at the open spaces around us, "how can people be getting so worked up about overpopulation? look at how much room there is everywhere". Well, for him, that's true, because that's the world he's seen. By that time I had been to Zanzibar, Delhi, and Tokyo and I had a somewhat better idea of what "crowding" really means.

[Gregorian]

27. We lose a few to death.

But yes, that number is one I recall.

[Karenina]

33. Unlimited growth

is the "mentality" of a cancer cell.

[Gregorian]

34. That is great.

I mean the concept.

I wish I had the cartoon I saw once. I had this really cool trumpet teacher. On his door was a guy with a sign that said "Doom". And there was a beatnik looking guy next to him with a sign that said "Da Doom Doom".

People say to me, make lemonaide when you get lemons. To that I say yeah, just try making turdcickles when you get turds.

It's like the glass half empty bullshit. It's another framed question. It's dynamic. You can only tell if the glass is half full or empty by whether it's being filled or emptied. If it's being emptied, then it's half empty.

[lvx35]

20. Yeah, but what do you do?

I think everybody knows it. When we talk about things like limits on family sizes though, we are also talking about communism, (or some big powerful government type system) and everybody knows it. We are already afraid of big government, and its reasonable when see somebody like Bush in control of it. But there is no "middle of the road" solution on population control. The far left would propose a system like China, the far right...well, I don't know what they would propose. But There is no easy way.

[Gregorian]

29. It's tough.

We've got our Sneddons and Santorums with fifteen kids between them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, as far as I'm concerned. But other people don't seem to feel the way I do.

You're right, my talk of limits is pretty draconian. But mother nature is far far worse.

It's a subject only very few people are even willing to touch, let alone internalize.

I have a strong sense of responsibility for future generations. Most people just think in terms of "me". I say that the "me" days are over, and we have to think of "we".

[lvx35]

30. The thing is EVERYODY knows you're right,

where "everybody" is taken to mean "thinking people". And you stance for future generations is right. But the devil is in the details here. Take for instance the people I work with, who have mental impairments. These people want to screw, but lack the mental ability to curb that desire...as a result they need to be constantly redirectly, some have gotten into trouble and had their sexual desire removed by the state...But the thing is, these people aren't really freaks, they are just below a certain threshold on the bell curve of human population, there are many like them but more functional, intelligence aside. Its not unreasonable to suggest that a portion of the population is hard wired to have a sexual desire that is stronger than reason. So the question is, HOW do you get between two of these people? How do you stop them from breeding if EVERYBODY else in the population is self regulating? There are really two options, one is TOTAL reaching government control, and another is an "e" word from the 1930's I'd just as soon not put on the table. I don't think mere economics can stop it.

[InvisibleTouch]

31. Population will be limited one way or another.

Either voluntarily, with a minimum of suffering, or ... Malthus will have the last word. I rather suspect the latter.

[peacebuzzard]

25. "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore

great documentary, tremendous author.

[Blue_Tires]

28. +1

[Delphinus]

32. Actually, Gregorian,

under the Environment/Energy forum, there's a topic about the explosion of population and I was the bad guy who said we needed to limit population. Check it out:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x66668

[Gregorian]

35. Wow.

I missed that thread.

It's the combination of population AND modern living.

I just try to find a place to live with a sense of dignity. It has gotten very hard and very expensive to do.

I think the worst is already done. The very inefficient cars and all kinds of inefficient processes. The use of camera film, paper, etc. And the first people to move on to places like the Sacramento valley, or the San Francisco penninsula. These were highly productive farming locations. There is only so much dirt like that on the planet. So suddenly we are not using paper. But we traded technology by using hydroflouric acids and arsenics to make computer chips. All in all I think the damage is done.

It's maddening to have to sit here and watch it. And even worse to have to be the kind of person who needs to run from it. And now I've found I can't run at all because it's coming from every direction. Pretty sick. I've made predictions about what this is going to mean for human beings, many years ago. They are all coming true. And I wanted to be wrong. Now all I can do is learn to not care, and just try to live my life.


Edit- The way I see this is people who have children are affecting other people's lives. I am not sure I want people entering my private life and saying I shouldn't do something. Although I live my life to not encroach on anyone else. I'm out of time. My hash browns are going to be black, shortly. I'd like to say more.

[kestrel91316]

22. You're looking at the butterfly effect in action...........

[don954]

5. When will we have a government that recognized the environmental

devastation as a "Clear and Present Danger"?

[leftchick]

8. not in my lifetime

or my children's I am afraid. :cry:

[mom cat]

9. And this does not even take into account the impact of the methane crystal

formations in the ocean depths waiting to be released.

[halobeam]

11. Is that what will eventually stop the jet stream dead on?

[mom cat]

13. Not directly, except to the degree to which it adds to global warming.

The current shut down will be a result of the massive melting of Arctic ice that will produce a great volume of fresh (less salty) water flowing into the Atlantic. It is the sinking of the dense salty water that fuels the thermohaline current worldwide. No sinking water + no energy to push the current.

On edit, you said jet stream, not Gulf stream. What is this about the Jet stream stopping? The jet stream is due to the spinning of the earth and should not be stopping unless the earth stops spinning.

[skids]

17. No, that...

...does this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

and very possibly this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event#Methane_hydrate_gasification

[bhikkhu]

19. I don't believe the jet stream is a worry

the gulf stream, on the other hand...

[truthisfreedom]

10. hmm. too bad we can't collect it and store it somewhere. is methane

an easier source for extracting Hydrogen than water?

[silverweb]

26. I've been thinking the same thing.

You'd think there would be some way to collect it and use it. It would be a massive undertaking -- but the alternative is a poisonous atmosphere!

[ArbustoBuster]

12. A definition

A teragram is one million metric tons. So tens of thousands of teragrams is tens of billions of metric tons.

[goforit]

14. Sounds like a new ice age will be on its way soon.

[Ezlivin]

16. No Smoking

Light up and the world lights up with you.

With that much methane in the air, you'd have to be damned careful not to blow yourself right into orbit.

[skids]

18. Well I wouldn't smoke near the release areas...

...for sure, but once released it turns to CO2 over a short time period. Not to say this isn't disasterous news, but it has happenned before, and there was no global gas explosion despite there being plenty of sources of sparks in the natural world (Just a mass extinction, not one of the BBQ variety.)

[IndianaGreen]

23. Scientists Find New Global Warming 'Time Bomb’

Here is a related story:


This October 2003 photo provided by the journal Nature shows methane
bubbles trapped in lake ice in Siberia in early autumn. Methane trapped
in a special type of permafrost is bubbling up at rate five times faster than
originally measured, according to a study in the Thursday, Sept. 6, 2006,
issue of the journal Nature. (AP Photo/Nature, Katey Walter)

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Associated Press
Scientists Find New Global Warming 'Time Bomb’
by Seth Borenstein

WASHINGTON - Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb.

Methane - a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide - is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published today in the journal Nature. The findings are based on new, more accurate measuring techniques.

‘‘The effects can be huge,’’ said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said. ‘‘It’s coming out a lot and there’s a lot more to come out.’’

Scientists worry about a global warming vicious cycle that was not part of their already gloomy climate forecast: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.

‘‘The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle,’’ said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the study. ‘‘That’s the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off.’’

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0907-07.htm

[truthisfreedom]

24. i like "Siberian lakes burp “time-bomb” greenhouse gas" better... rolls of

of the tongue. 8^)