Jason Box On Tracking The Dragon's Breath; What Is Happening With Arctic Hydrates?

[hatrack]

The global network of greenhouse gas sampling stations as per NOAA

Clearly, considering the vastness of the Arctic, the network of ground-based observing stations does appear sparse, with a solitary station representing Siberia, at Tiksi, you’re left thinking that governments should do more to keep their finger on this pulse. On the pulse side, however, the measurements happening at Tiksi [and other sites in the network such as Alert and Pt. Barrow northern Alaska], I can tell you, are really high end; with BSRN radiometers, eddy covariance gas fluxes, gas flask sampling, etc., impressive and not inexpensive. What do these data tell us?

1. A 30 year methane data series from Alert, far northern Canada, 30 year, includes an 8% increase in methane. This is the most recent 8% of the more than 250% humans have elevated methane since industrialism began year 1750 or so. The Tiksi record started recently is too short to deduce a trend. But it includes, like the other records in this network,

2. Methane records from this network include occasional spikes. Green symbols on the charts below indicate these extreme positive outliers. A reasonable hypothesis for the outliers marked below by me with dragon breath? [I had these labled WTF? ] would be: extreme outlying positive anomalies represent high methane concentration plumes emanating from tundra and/or oceanic sources. Another reasonable hypothesis would be: extreme outlying positive anomalies represent observational errors. What NOAA states: the outliers “are thought to be not indicative of background conditions, and represent poorly mixed air masses influenced by local or regional anthropogenic sources or strong local biospheric sources or sinks. ” Fair enough. But, the dragon breath hypothesis has me losing sleep.







While we don’t have permanent measurements floating over the oceanic centers of action, for example over the Eastern Siberian shallow continental shelf, we do have satellite data from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on board the Eumetsat Polar System (EPS) Metop-A Satellite. And as I know from installing/maintaing Arctic ground measurements and publishing articles assessing the quality of satellite-derived retrievals from the Arctic, most recently here, validation studies are needed. So, it’s good to find Xiong et al. (2013) who, using “596 methane vertical profiles from aircraft measurements by the HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) program” find that the remotely sensed quantities are accurate and have a small (less than 2%) low bias. Yet, their assessment is for the part of the atmosphere well above the surface. Some accuracy findings for IASI over the Arctic are provided by the Yurganov et al. (AGU poster 2012) that concludes:

IASI data can be used as qualitative indicator of the Arctic Ocean methane emission.

Current methane growth in the Arctic, including 2012, is gradual.

Methane emission from the Arctic shelf has a maximum in September-October. [when sea ice minimum occurs]

Top-down emission estimates are difficult and may be very uncertain ( e. g., ± 100%)

If a sudden venting (bubbling) of methane would happen due to intense hydrates destruction, IASI would be able to detect it near real-time

EDIT

http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=1329

[GliderGuider]

1. The breathing of the Dragon King?

Didier Sornette's concept explained: Dragon-Kings, Black Swans and the Prediction of Crises

No wonder the author is losing sleep over this.