Siberia is releasing TEN TIMES more carbon than previously thought???

[GliderGuider]

Arctic collapse dramatically increases global warming

Parts of Arctic Siberia are releasing ten times more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, a University of Manchester scientist and an international team of researchers have found.

Writing in Nature, the scientists, led by Stockholm University, discovered that much more greenhouse gas is being released into the atmosphere than previously calculated, from and ancient an large carbon pool held in a permafrost along the 7,000 km desolate coast of northernmost Siberian Arctic – dramatically increasing global warming.

As the temperature climbs carbon, stored in vast ice walls along this Arctic coast called Yedoma, covering about one million km2 (four times the area of the UK), is pouring into the Arctic Ocean in one of the world’s most remote and desolate regions.

This region is experiencing twice the global average of climate warming. While satellite images reveal thousands of kilometers of milky-cloudy waters along the Arctic coast, suggesting a massive influx of material, the Yedoma has remained understudied largely due to the region’s inaccessibility.

Hold on tight, here we go...

[hobbit709]

1. It's what happens when the permafrost thaws.

Wait until all the methane ice on the coastal ocean bottoms starts erupting. methane is 100 times more of a greenhouse gas than CO2

[Whisp]

2. Giant plumes of methane bubbling to surface of Arctic Ocean

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/giant-plumes-methane-bubbling-surface-arctic-ocean-163804179.html

By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – Wed, 14 Dec, 2011

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Methane bubbles trapped in the arctic iceRussian scientists have discovered hundreds of plumes of methane gas, some 1,000 meters in diameter, bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic Shelf recedes, the unprecedented levels of gas released could greatly accelerate global climate change.

Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences tells the UK's Independent that the plumes of methane, a gas 20 times as harmful as carbon dioxide, have shocked scientists who have been studying the region for decades. "Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of meters in diameter," he said. "This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing."

Semiletov said that while his research team has discovered more than 100 plumes, they estimate there to be "thousands" over the wider area, extending from the Russian mainland to the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale — I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometer or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere — the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."

[Javaman]

5. +1000

everyone worries about CO2 and rightly so, but it's mild compared to what will happen when the methane release goes full bore.

[slackmaster]

3. This may be the most important story in today's news, but it will be overshadowed by the circus...

...in Tampa Bay.

[GliderGuider]

4. Everywhere you look above the Arctic Circle you see instability of one sort or another.

Ice and snow coverage are hitting record lows, air, water and soil temperatures are rising inexorably (and much faster than at southern latitudes), there's melting permafrost, and bubbling methane in the lakes and oceans... It really looks like we've passed a bifurcation point and have entered a new climate regime

The Arctic climate change is changing the pattern of the polar jet stream, and those changes are in turn driving weather changes in the Northern Hemisphere - leading to the current droughts in the US and Asia (including the problems with the Indian monsoon) - and that's putting a crimp in the world's food supply.

For the last five years I thought Peak Oil and financial collapse were the significant short term threats to civilization, but that climate change would only bite us in the medium or longer term. How wrong can one well-informed person be?

With apologies to Lewis Carroll, this Snark is a Boojum.