More Arctic Methane Anomalies Recorded and projected after temperature spiking detected: Arctic Methane Bomb

 Moreover, a 2 °C temperature anomaly in 2016 led to the highest recorded annual CH₄ emissions (22.3 Tg CH₄ yr⁻¹) over this region, driven primarily by high emissions over Western Siberian lowlands. However, current-generation models from the Global Carbon Project failed to capture the emission magnitude and trend, and may bias the estimates in future wetland CH₄ emission driven by amplified Boreal–Arctic warming and greening.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01933-3 

 Simulated CH₄ emissions substantially increased by a factor of 5.3 to 7.5 under the SSP5–8.5 scenario compared to the SSP1–2.6 and SSP2–4.5 scenarios. The projected CH₄ emissions exhibited a stronger response to rising temperature under the SSP5–8.5 scenario than under the SSP1–2.6 and SSP2–4.5 scenarios, primarily due to strong temperature dependence and the enhanced precipitation-induced expansion of anoxic conditions that promoted methanogenesis. The CH₄ transport via ebullition and plant-mediated transport is projected to increase under all three SSP scenarios, and ebullition dominated CH₄ transport by 2100 across five sites.

 https://spj.science.org/doi/full/10.34133/ehs.0185

 thanks for your question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSOAsZx7eH8 Jennifer Francis just did a new interview on the accelerating crisis of arctic ice loss. According to the DMI - arctic ice volume is record low. Volume is what drives extent - meaning the extent could be almost full thereby misleading people who don't realize the ice is very very thin and thus will disappear very fast. "Just one part of the Arctic Ocean alone, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS, see figure 7. below), holds up to 1700 Gt of methane. A sudden release of just 3% of this amount could add over 50 Gt of methane to the atmosphere," - this is what Eliot Jacobson is ignoring despite his deep concern. So the Arctic methane being released into the atmosphere is already much greater than is being tracked back to the arctic. http://arctic-news.blogspot.com provides this early calculation for methane contribution to global heating: "A back-of-envelope calculation suggests that the methane burden in 1750 was 5 Gt x (722 : 1803) = 2 Gt. Furthermore, methane's 0.97 W/m-2 RF is 42% of the total RF 2.29 W/m-2. Therefore, the 3 Gt of methane that has been added to the atmosphere since 1750 is responsible for almost half of all the global warming since that time. " https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/quantifying-arctic-methane.html So Eliot's big dismissal of this calculation is that the person multiplied ppb x gigatons when you have to convert ppb first to weight and then tarry the weight as moles for the common denominator before multiplying. So what I did in this vid is reveal the likely source for Andrew Glikson's conversion of methane ppb to co2 equivalent in ppm via "radiative forcing" in watts. Based on the Glikson analysis the claim is that including the current methane levels close to 2000 ppb actually adds another 400 ppm CO2 in terms of "watts per meter squared heat." So normally methane is only considered to be 1/2 a watt or .5 watt per meter squared in heat while CO2 is 2 watts per meter (and then reduction of the Aerosol Masking Effect is another 1 watt per meter squared). But it appears that the methane is more of a heat contribution - and so closer to 1 watt per meter squared. This means as per Glikson that the CO2-equivalent for heating is actually 830 ppm CO2 and not the 540 ppm CO2 or so as Eliot is claiming. Of course the precise heat level is complicated since 90% of the heat is absorbed by the oceans but then will be released back out eventually. The issue here is not so much the amount but the RATE of change. Since ESAS holds so much pressurized methane then just a 5 gigaton "burst" or methane abrupt eruption would add enough co2-equivalent to push the heating into the "Cloud tipping point" - essentially evaporating the clouds that reflect the photon radiation - thereby spiking temperatures to immediate "biological annihilation" on Earth. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1174760 Shindell, D. T., Faluvegi, G., Koch, D. M., Schmidt, G. A., Unger, N., & Bauer, S. E. (2009). Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions. Science, 326(5953), 716–718. That is the source that the geologist "Macolm Light" relied on for his methane calculations. A NASA study. "Hence, the uncertainty in quantifying these pro- cesses implies only that the larger estimates of CO and methane GWPs presented here may still be too low." So the more methane released the longer it stays to heat up EArth. "A 2009 study by Drew Shindell found that increases in global methane emissions did cause a 26% hydroxyl decrease. Because of this, methane now persists longer in the atmosphere, before getting transformed into the less potent carbon dioxide. A Centre for Atmospheric Science study suggests that sea ice loss may amplify permafrost warming, with an ice-free Arctic featuring a decrease in hydroxyl of up to 60% and an increase of tropospheric ozone (another greenhouse gas) of up to 60% over the Arctic. This lack of hydroxyl means that methane will persist in the atmosphere for longer at its high global warming potency." "The study by Isaksen et al. shows (image below) that a scenario of 7 times current methane (image below, medium light colors) over 50 years would correspond with a radiative forcing of 3.6 W/m-2. " So this means there are secondary feedback amplifications as the methane increases. So the real issue then is that the Arctic pressurized methane in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf could easily cause "runaway global warming" that would fry life on Earth. https://www.igsd.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Background-Note-on-Methane-.pdf "When methane’s contribution to the production of tropospheric ozone, CO2, and stratospheric water vapour are included, its radiative forcing is much higher at 0.97 Wm-2. Alexander L., et al. (2013) SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS, in IPCC (2013) CLIMATE CHANGE 2013: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BASIS, Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 11 (“Emissions of CO2 alone have caused an RF of 1.68 [1.33 to 2.03] W m–2 (see Figure SPM.5). Including emissions of other carbon-containing gases, which also contributed to the increase in CO2 concentrations, the RF of CO2 is 1.82 [1.46 to 2.18] W m–2…. Emissions of CH4 [methane] alone have caused an RF of 0.97 [0.74 to 1.20] W m−2 (see Figure SPM.5). This is much larger than the concentration-based estimate of 0.48 [0.38 to 0.58] Wm−2 (unchanged from AR4). This difference in estimates is caused by concentration changes in ozone and stratospheric water vapour due to CH4 emissions and other emissions indirectly affecting CH4.”).

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024JD040766 

  We find 34%–50% of yearly emissions occurred in the late season (September–December) consistently across multiple years and regions, which is historically underestimated in models and inventories.

 Over 50% of the Arctic's annual methane emissions could be originating from the cold season (Zona et al., 2016), a finding often overlooked in global emission assessments (Saunois et al., 2020).

 Surface networks in the Arctic may miss a future methane bomb

Abstract

The Arctic is warming up to 4 times faster than the global average, leading to significant environmental changes. Given the sensitivity of natural methane (CH₄) sources to environmental conditions, increasing Arctic temperatures are expected to lead to higher CH₄ emissions, particularly due to permafrost thaw and the exposure of organic matter. Some estimates therefore assume the existence of an Arctic methane bomb, where vast CH₄ quantities are suddenly and rapidly released over several years. This study examines the ability of the in situ observation network to detect such events in the Arctic, a generally poorly constrained region. Using the FLEXPART (FLEXible PARTicle) atmospheric transport model and varying CH₄ emission scenarios, we found that areas with a dense observation network could detect a methane bomb occurring within 2 to 10 years. In contrast, regions with sparse coverage would need 10 to 30 years, with potential false positives in other areas.

 One gigatonne is exactly 1000 teragrams. 

 Future estimates suggest that around 50 Gt [50,000 Tg] of methane could be released from gas hydrates in the ESAS alone over the next 50 years (Shakhova et al., 2010), consistent with present annual estimates (e.g.  Berchet et al., 2016).Methane emissions from anthropogenic sources are estimated to be around at around 2 to 10 Tg CH₄ yr⁻¹ (Saunois et al., 2020). Anthropogenic CH₄ emissions in the Arctic are not explicitly assumed to increase in the future and several Arctic states report decreases in future emissions (Arctic-Council, 2019).