Craters from methane eruptions in the Siberian Arctic

[Mihalik]

So after a year of record temperatures breaking the 100F (38C) mark , nearly 2 months of arctic forest fires, oil spills and building collapses caused by thawing permafrost, meet the new WTF fuckery afoot.

Explosive methane eruptions from the thawing permafrost.

https://www.sciencealert.com/another...n-recent-years



The Arctic permafrost traps phenomenal amounts of methane (a green house gas several times worse than carbon dioxide), but it's ability to keep that trapped is tied to it being permanently frozen as the name suggests.

These sinkholes and methane eruptions probably occur naturally during thaws but they are relatively rare, becoming much more common place as pretty much the whole arctic is irrecoverably melting.

While the eruptions themselves aren't necessarily dangerous unless you are standing near them when it occurs, it highlights the insane amount of methane that is being pumped into the atmosphere as the arctic is losing its ability to act as a sink. Further contributing to rising temperatures which in turn will accelerate the process.

Welcome to climate change hell, now it's a full on run amok train.

[Lynarii]

Holy shit, tell me that's mosses around a tiny hole, and not trees around a giant crater.

Checking story... it's probably bushes but it's really that big. That's all sorts of bad.

[Shadowferal]

Methane?
Mother Nature has a bad case of gas...

[Tuor]

I wonder what deniers will tell us now.

Methane?
Mother Nature has a bad case of gas...

Lol

[cubby]

So after a year of record temperatures breaking the 100F (38C) mark , nearly 2 months of arctic forest fires, oil spills and building collapses caused by thawing permafrost, meet the new WTF fuckery afoot.

Explosive methane eruptions from the thawing permafrost.

https://www.sciencealert.com/another...n-recent-years



The Arctic permafrost traps phenomenal amounts of methane (a green house gas several times worse than carbon monoxide), but it's ability to keep that trapped is tied to it being permanently frozen as the name suggests.

These sinkholes and methane eruptions probably occur naturally during thaws but they are relatively rare, becoming much more common place as pretty much the whole arctic is irrecoverably melting.

While the eruptions themselves aren't necessarily dangerous unless you are standing near them when it occurs, it highlights the insane amount of methane that is being pumped into the atmosphere as the arctic is losing its ability to act as a sink. Further contributing to rising temperatures which in turn will accelerate the process.

Welcome to climate change hell, now it's a full on run amok train.

Doesn't this and other developments mean we're past the point of now return, and into a cascading effect?

- - - Updated - - -

Methane?
Mother Nature has a bad case of gas...

Lol. On a serious note Methane is much worse as a greenhouse gas, compared to Carbon Dioxide. Less amounts do more "damage" and Methane sticks around a lot longer than Carbon Dioxide, somewhere around an order of magnitude longer.

[beanman12345]

chinese hoax!

[Forogil]

Lol. On a serious note Methane is much worse as a greenhouse gas, compared to Carbon Dioxide. Less amounts do more "damage" and Methane sticks around a lot longer than Carbon Dioxide, somewhere around an order of magnitude longer.

Half-right.

Methane is much more potent, but it only last 12 years or so in the atmosphere compared to about a century (or more) for carbon dioxide.
The issue is more if the methane during that short window causes additional heating that has long-term effects (like releasing more methane).

- - - Updated - - -

chinese hoax!

Isn't it Russia making a hole in the climate hoax?

[Mayhem]

Finally some good news out of Russia in 2020.

not

[Mihalik]

Doesn't this and other developments mean we're past the point of now return, and into a cascading effect?.

It does. We are breaking through literally every cascade tipping point at break neck speeds.

Even the more pessimistic models from a decade ago seem optimistic now.

Latest worst case models predict the possibility of 8 C temperature rises caused by the dispersal of stratocomulus clouds that do much of shielding from the heat of the sun. In that scenario we might end up causing a Moist Greenhouse Effect.

While this doesn't sound that bad, it would mean that in many parts of the Earth water vapour could become a significant part of the atmosphere. There's a certain humidity level at which humans can no longer breath, assuming the heat or insane weather didn't kill us first, which it probably would. As an 8C average temperature increase would mean 150 to 160F (65C to 70C) summer temperatures in areas of the planet where most humans live.

It would take millions of years for the atmosphere to dump enough CO2 for temperatures to come down again.

Tho for emphasis... This is the absolute worst case model right now.

But, then again, 53C in the Middle East and 1C global average temperature increase by 2050 was the worst case scenario 25 years ago and we already blew past that 30 years ahead of "schedule".

If there's one consistent thing about climate change modeling is our ability to consistently underestimate our ability to fuck this up.

[Shadowferal]

So...this case of gas will last longer than a fart in an elevator.
Not a good sign of things to come...and no toilet either.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Man... I'm sat here reading the Crossed comic, but not until I read this OP did I feel a sting of dread and disgust...

Can only imagine what I'd feel like if I had kids.

[Ashnazg]

It does. We are breaking through literally every cascade tipping point at break neck speeds.

While this doesn't sound that bad, it would mean that in many parts of the Earth water vapour could become a significant part of the atmosphere. There's a certain humidity level at which humans can no longer breath, assuming the heat or insane weather didn't kill us first, which it probably would. As an 8C average temperature increase would mean 150 to 160F (65C to 70C) summer temperatures in areas of the planet where most humans live.


If there's one consistent thing about climate change modeling is our ability to consistently underestimate our ability to fuck this up.

Civilization will carry on. The brunt of the impact will happen in less developed nations, so while their fate is unfortunate, the overall impact on civilization will be survivable. A new refugee crisis, and robots will have to replace all the low-cost labor in southern countries, but nothing that we, as humans, cannot handle.

The more developed, northern part of the hemisphere will trudge on.

[Mihalik]

Civilization will carry on. The brunt of the impact will happen in less developed nations, so while their fate is unfortunate, the overall impact on civilization will be survivable. A new refugee crisis, and robots will have to replace all the low-cost labor in southern countries, but nothing that we, as humans, cannot handle.

The more developed, northern part of the hemisphere will trudge on.

1. The notion that humanity will survive this is a bit presumptuous. Albeit likely.
2 The notion that civilization will survive is silly. We've already seen in our own history civilizations collapse due to cataclysmic environmental pressures.

The Bronze Age Collapse. The Khmer, the Anasazi, the Indus Valley civilization, the Mayans are just a few examples I can think of. Our global modern civilization is more vulnerable than any of these were to systemic collapse.

Furthermore the "more developed northern hemisphere" is actually the one that would be by far the hardest hit because it contains most of the world's landmass, most of its population and most of the areas exposed to extreme climate events.

[Thekri]

It does. We are breaking through literally every cascade tipping point at break neck speeds.

Even the more pessimistic models from a decade ago seem optimistic now.

Latest worst case models predict the possibility of 8 C temperature rises caused by the dispersal of stratocomulus clouds that do much of shielding from the heat of the sun. In that scenario we might end up causing a Moist Greenhouse Effect.

While this doesn't sound that bad, it would mean that in many parts of the Earth water vapour could become a significant part of the atmosphere. There's a certain humidity level at which humans can no longer breath, assuming the heat or insane weather didn't kill us first, which it probably would. As an 8C average temperature increase would mean 150 to 160F (65C to 70C) summer temperatures in areas of the planet where most humans live.

It would take millions of years for the atmosphere to dump enough CO2 for temperatures to come down again.

Tho for emphasis... This is the absolute worst case model right now.

But, then again, 53C in the Middle East and 1C global average temperature increase by 2050 was the worst case scenario 25 years ago and we already blew past that 30 years ahead of "schedule".

If there's one consistent thing about climate change modeling is our ability to consistently underestimate our ability to fuck this up.

A lot of previous estimates from the 1990s and even early 2000s seriously underestimated processes of natural acceleration. Essentially, there is a whole network of natural process that snowball when this starts happening. For instance, in Greenland, once the glaciers lose a certain amount of ice, the mouth of the glacier gets much wider, and the ice lose increases dramatically. Warmer spring and fall seasons lead to algae growth sticking around on the ice for much longer, leading to less light being reflected, and thus melting more ice. Causing it to get even warmer, and so forth.

The methane/carbon dioxide in the permafrost is possibly the biggest example of this. There is such a staggering amount of it in there, and the warmer it gets, the more gets released, which makes it hotter, which means more gets released... And of course, each of these processes accelerate all the other processes as well.

But there are two important bits of context here. 1) This happens naturally sometimes even without humans. However it probably doesn't happen nearly this fast. 2) There are also environmental factors that kick in to stop this acceleration, and ultimately reverse it.

Neither of those two bits of context are actually comforting though. Because they are both really bad. While these events do happen naturally, they also tend to cause really dramatic mass extinction events, and permanently change the biomes of entire continents. While new biomes will arise, it does means the previous creatures and plants of those areas go extinct.

The second bit, those factors that stop rampant carbon buildups in the atmosphere? Well those are pretty damn nasty to multi-cellular life. It is a bit like fire prevention systems, they stop everything from getting destroyed, but you really don't want to be in the building when they go off. The big one is algaes, which is the direct cause of most of the carbon in the permafrost, most fossilized hydrocarbons, and so forth. It was what took the carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place, and it is what will ultimately put it all back. It does so through massive algae blooms, such as the infamous "Red Tide" of the Gulf of Mexico. It poisons the water, the beaches, and absolutely crushes the oxygen content of the water under it. It pours out literal tons of toxins into the water. However, it also absorbs really crazy amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Then it dies, falls to the bottom of the ocean, and gets buried, thus sequestering the carbon from the environment. Large blooms can easily exceed the Amazonian Rainforest in carbon sequestering while they live, and these blooms are just getting bigger. We are seeing more of them too, devastating both fresh water and salt water areas. These blooms are necessary to bringing the balance back, but they come with a terrible cost to environments.

If humans don't clean up our mess, nature will. And we won't like it.

[Endus]

Doesn't this and other developments mean we're past the point of now return, and into a cascading effect?

We probably passed the point into a cascade of warming somewhere in the early aughts. It's difficult to be precise on exactly when, but we weren't past that point in 1995, and we were past it by 2010 or so.

Even if we cut all anthropogenic emissions tomorrow, to zero, forever, the planet's going to continue to warm, the poles will continue to melt, and that cycle is likely to continue for centuries before settling back down, because that warming triggers events like these methane releases (also things like how icecaps at the poles reflect more heat, by being white, than open water or land does, being darker, so shrinking icecaps directly contribute to warming, and that's just one way out of several).

It's not a runaway cascade, in that we're not going to turn into Venus. But it's not likely to stop until all the glaciers and icecaps have melted away completely, which means we're looking at some 230 feet of sea level rise. Not right away, in 500+ years, most likely, unless there's a major change. But still. It's not a paradigm that's ever existed in the history of our species.

Lol. On a serious note Methane is much worse as a greenhouse gas, compared to Carbon Dioxide. Less amounts do more "damage" and Methane sticks around a lot longer than Carbon Dioxide, somewhere around an order of magnitude longer.

Half right.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/ove...CO2-references

Methane's way more impactful on warming, pound for pound, compared to CO2. But CO2 will stick around in the atmosphere, at least in part, for thousands of years. Methane's generally re-absorbed into the environment within 12-15 years.

Over a 100-year time frame, however, an amount of methane will contribute about 25 times as much warming as the same amount of CO2. The difference is that methane packs that warming into the first few years of that century, where CO2 lasts throughout and well beyond. Methane's basically the short-term nitro on warming, and CO2 means that the warming never stops; it's the slow "coasting" of long-term warming.

Edit: The really crazy possibility is an Antarctic ice shelf sliding into the ocean. Unlike sea ice, that ice is supported by land, and isn't displacing water currently. Those shelves are melting from underneath, and they're huge. Like, Greenland levels of "huge". If one of those snaps off and starts to slide into the ocean, it could contribute to tens of meters of sea level rise, globally, as it displaces its mass in seawater.

And the rate at which that occurs is "as fast as the wave can travel". Pretty much overnight. Imagine a tidal wave 20 meters tall, except the waters never recede.

[Mihalik]

It's not a runaway cascade, in that we're not going to turn into Venus.

Earth can't really go full Venus as our atmospheric composition is too different, but it can get pretty fucking nasty for almost everything alive today as from a mammalian and specifically human survival standpoint the difference between a planet at 160F and 900F is purely academic.

[Ettan]

Holy shit, tell me that's mosses around a tiny hole, and not trees around a giant crater.

Checking story... it's probably bushes but it's really that big. That's all sorts of bad.

You dont get trees in the arctic generally only sparse vegetation. Its essentially like high altitude tree lines (~1400m high ish).

At 71°N roughly is what is considered the tree line in the arctic with the area north of it being considered non arable.
In reality its a gradual change ofc and not an arbitrary line. Near the coastal regions ect large vegetation will cling on for longer.

[Thekri]

We probably passed the point into a cascade of warming somewhere in the early aughts. It's difficult to be precise on exactly when, but we weren't past that point in 1995, and we were past it by 2010 or so.

Well I would argue there never really was a single breakpoint, because this was the direction earths climate was already heading. What we are doing is accelerating it, and doing so at a terrifying rate. Earths climate is never stable, never has been. Sometimes it can remain reletively stable for a couple million years, as it apparently did during the Mesozoic, but since then it has been in a constant state of flux, with major changes occurring in mere tens of thousands of years. We are an in an upward trend of temperature since the last glacial maximum. There are of course dips in the trend, such as in the Medieval cold period.

An example of this is the formation of the Sahara within historical times, as well as the loss of Doggerland after human civilization. Rising sea levels and rising temperatures has always been part of human history.

Even if we cut all anthropogenic emissions tomorrow, to zero, forever, the planet's going to continue to warm, the poles will continue to melt, and that cycle is likely to continue for centuries before settling back down, because that warming triggers events like these methane releases (also things like how icecaps at the poles reflect more heat, by being white, than open water or land does, being darker, so shrinking icecaps directly contribute to warming, and that's just one way out of several).

Yep. Entirely true. The difference is speed. If we slow down or reverse our contributions, we can make this play out over millennia, with far less catastrophic effects on ecological diversity. If we don't, it will look less like the end the end of the last glacial maximum (Pretty much best case scenario) and will look more like the Permian-Triassic extinction...

It's not a runaway cascade, in that we're not going to turn into Venus. But it's not likely to stop until all the glaciers and icecaps have melted away completely, which means we're looking at some 230 feet of sea level rise. Not right away, in 500+ years, most likely, unless there's a major change. But still. It's not a paradigm that's ever existed in the history of our species.

Well, Venus is pretty much the worst case example. Which is basically just the P-T extinction, except with 4% more species going extinct (Making a total of all of them). The timeline is the important part though. 230 feet in 500 years is 6 inches a year, which is a whole hell of a lot. However, worst case we could see it MUCH faster then that. Widespread thawing of the permafrost could dramatically escalate that timeline. If humans start actually contributing to carbon sequestration, we could actually slow it.

Half right.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/ove...CO2-references

Methane's way more impactful on warming, pound for pound, compared to CO2. But CO2 will stick around in the atmosphere, at least in part, for thousands of years. Methane's generally re-absorbed into the environment within 12-15 years.

Over a 100-year time frame, however, an amount of methane will contribute about 25 times as much warming as the same amount of CO2. The difference is that methane packs that warming into the first few years of that century, where CO2 lasts throughout and well beyond. Methane's basically the short-term nitro on warming, and CO2 means that the warming never stops; it's the slow "coasting" of long-term warming.

Yep. Good Stuff.

Edit: The really crazy possibility is an Antarctic ice shelf sliding into the ocean. Unlike sea ice, that ice is supported by land, and isn't displacing water currently. Those shelves are melting from underneath, and they're huge. Like, Greenland levels of "huge". If one of those snaps off and starts to slide into the ocean, it could contribute to tens of meters of sea level rise, globally, as it displaces its mass in seawater.

And the rate at which that occurs is "as fast as the wave can travel". Pretty much overnight. Imagine a tidal wave 20 meters tall, except the waters never recede.

While this is REALLY apocolyptic, and a lot of people will dismiss it because of that, it is not actually nearly as far fetched as many people think. Really apocalyptic events do happen, it is just that they are rare enough that a lot of them haven't happened in the very brief period of human history. A couple of them have, such as the Santorini eruption, and the Storegga Slide, both of which annihilated entire cultures. There are several others that are inevitable at some point, for instance, Lake Kivu is going to kill everyone near it at some point. It has done it many times before, but since it only does it every couple thousand years, so since the last time it happened, about 2 million humans moved into the area.

The Antarctic Shelf collapse is inevitable. There is absolutely no environmental condition that keeps Antarctica as stupidly cold as it is. So it has been warming for the last 10 million years or so (Slowly, because the Drake current keeps too much heat from reaching it). It is basically a freezer that is unplugged. It is always going to get warmer, but it is going to take a long time because it is huge. These big shelf collapses can cause truely apocalyptic tsunamis like humans have never seen, potentially even bigger then the Storrega Slides.

The terrifying thing about climate acceleration is we might actually see some of these things in the relatively near future. Like within our grandchildrens life times. And one can easily lead into another.

[Endus]

Well I would argue there never really was a single breakpoint, because this was the direction earths climate was already heading.

This simply wasn't the case.

We've been in an ice age for a few million years now, and the climate has cycled from glacial periods to interglacials (glacial periods being what's commonly understood as an "ice age", even though the term actually refers to the existence of ice caps at the poles, at all). We're at the peak of an interglacial period, and have been for long enough that the climate should be tipping over into cooling, natural cycles remaining consistent. That cooling would've taken place over tens of thousands of years, so not really appreciable at a human scale.

A cyclical system does not mean it's an unstable system. The seasonal cycle should be an obvious example why not. The glacial-interglacial is just as predictive, based on precession of the poles and other orbital factors, on much longer time scales.

What we are doing is accelerating it, and doing so at a terrifying rate. Earths climate is never stable, never has been. Sometimes it can remain reletively stable for a couple million years, as it apparently did during the Mesozoic, but since then it has been in a constant state of flux, with major changes occurring in mere tens of thousands of years. We are an in an upward trend of temperature since the last glacial maximum. There are of course dips in the trend, such as in the Medieval cold period.

We've been in a stable cycle throughout the Quaternary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

It's human activity that's on the brink of kicking us out of that stable cycle.

[Thekri]

This simply wasn't the case.

We've been in an ice age for a few million years now, and the climate has cycled from glacial periods to interglacials (glacial periods being what's commonly understood as an "ice age", even though the term actually refers to the existence of ice caps at the poles, at all). We're at the peak of an interglacial period, and have been for long enough that the climate should be tipping over into cooling, natural cycles remaining consistent. That cooling would've taken place over tens of thousands of years, so not really appreciable at a human scale.



We've been in a stable cycle throughout the Quaternary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

It's human activity that's on the brink of kicking us out of that stable cycle.

It depends on your definition of "Stable". It has been a cycle of glacial periods and interglacials, as you mentioned, but that is very specifically NOT stable, it is constant change with dramatic effects on climate. This current inter-glacial period eliminated a significant amount of megafauna when it started, and has accelerated since then. It removed the Bering Land Bridge and created the English Channel in the last few thousand years, as sea levels rose. A lot of modern deserts are of similar age.

It is a difference it terms. We were, and are, under a period of warming because that is what an interglacial period is. It will at some point tip back over into another glacial period by the mechanisms I described in my first post (With Algael blooms leading the way). However there really isn't any evidence that we "Should" have already tipped over into a cooling period yet, because the cycle isn't that consistent. If you look at the zoomed out view that is shown on the page you linked, you will see while the short term cycle indicates it might tip over to cooling soon, the long term view suggests we may look at a longer upward clime.
As you can see, we are close to the bottom of geological cold period, as you mentioned, and it might be about time to start a sustained period of warming.

Just because we have been in a glacial period doesn't mean we will stay there, Earth never does that. It is always warming or cooling. The scary part about now is the speed it is changing, which is not normal, and that is because of human influence.

That isn't to say it is extremely predictable. We very well could see a cooling period start in the next thousand years or so. "Climate Change" is the term that replaced "Global Warming" for exactly that reason. These massive Algae blooms that started ramping up in the last century is a harbinger of exactly that, but right now the warming phenomena are beating out the cooling ones. Take a look at the historical record of "Red Tide" on the US Atlantic Coast

1530: First alleged case off the Florida Gulf Coast is without foundation.[36] According to Marine Lab at University of Miami, the first possible Red Tide in Florida was in 1844. Earlier "signs" were from boats sorting fish on their way to home port dumping trash fish overboard. Thus "dead fish" reports along the coast were not Red Tide.[37]
1793: The first recorded case occurring in British Columbia, Canada.[38]
1840: No deaths of humans have been attributed to Florida red tide, but people may experience respiratory irritation (coughing, sneezing, and tearing) when the red tide organism (Karenia brevis) is present along a coast and winds blow its aerosolized toxins. Swimming is usually safe, but skin irritation and burning is possible in areas of high concentration of red tide.[39]
1844: First possible case off the Florida Gulf Coast according to Marine Lab University of Miami, probably by ships off shore, no known inhabitants of the coast reporting.[37]
1916: Massive fish kill along SW Florida coast. Noxious air thought to be seismic underwater explosion releasing chlorine gas.[40]
1947: Southwest Florida
1972: A red tide was caused in New England by a toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium (Gonyaulax) tamarense. The red tides caused by the dinoflagellate Gonyaulax are serious because this organism produces saxitoxin and gonyautoxins which accumulate in shellfish and if ingested may lead to paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) and can lead to death.[41]
1972 and 1973: Red tides killed two villagers west of Port Moresby. In March 1973 a red tide invaded Port Moresby Harbour and destroyed a Japanese pearl farm.[42]
1976: The first PSP case in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo where 202 victims were reported to be suffering and 7 deaths.[38][43][44]
2005: The Canadian red tide was discovered to have come further south than it has in years prior by the ship (R/V) Oceanus,[45] closing shellfish beds in Maine and Massachusetts and alerting authorities as far south as Montauk (Long Island, NY) to check their beds.[46] Experts who discovered the reproductive cysts in the seabed warn of a possible spread to Long Island in the future, halting the area's fishing and shellfish industry and threatening the tourist trade, which constitutes a significant portion of the island's economy.
2005-2006: Southwest Florida Karenia brevis
2011: Northern California[47]
2011: Gulf of Mexico[48]
2013: In January, a red tide occurred again on the West Coast Sea of Sabah in the Malaysian Borneo.[43][49] Two human fatalities were reported after they consumed shellfish contaminated with the red tide toxin.[43][44][49]
2013: In January, a red tide bloom appeared at Sarasota beach – mainly Siesta Key, Florida causing a fish kill that had a negative impact on tourists, and caused respiratory issues for beach-goers.[50]
2014: In August, massive 'Florida red tide' 90 miles (140 km) long and 60 miles (97 km) wide.[51]
2015: June, 12 persons hospitalized in the Philippine province of Bohol for red tide poisoning.[52]
2015: August, several beaches in the Netherlands between Katwijk and Scheveningen were plagued. Government institutions dissuaded swimmers from entering the water.[53]
2015: September, a red tide bloom occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, affecting Padre Island National Seashore along North Padre Island and South Padre Island in Texas.[54]
2016: September, Texas Parks and Wildlife report red tide in the Lower Laguna Madre. "High to moderate concentrations of red tide have been found from Beach Access 6 to the Brazos Santiago jetties. Moderate cell concentrations have been found at the Isla Blanca Park boat ramp."[55]
2017 and 2018: K. brevis red tide algae with warnings not to swim, state of emergency declared, dead dolphin and manatee, worsened by Caloosahatchee River. Peaked in the summer of 2018. Toxic harmful algae bloom red tide in Southwest Florida.[56][57][58] A rare harmful algal bloom along Florida's east coast of Palm Beach County occurred the weekend of September 30, 2018.[59]

That isn't a phenomena that we are slowly discovering, that is a phenomena that is coming into existence while we watch. We don't have records of Red Tides for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries because they didn't exist. They certainly existed in the geological past, they are what caused petrochemical formations in the first place, but they only start showing up when shit is about to get real in a big way.