Showing posts with label John Nissen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Nissen. Show all posts

Friday, March 6, 2015

Save the Arctic sea ice while we still can!

The Arctic Ocean is coming close to complete summer meltdown, writes John Nissen - indeed it could happen as soon as September, triggering a severe deterioration in climate across the northern hemisphere. With fast-rising temperatures predicted in the coming decade, we must act now to save the Arctic, before it's too late.



By John Nissen

John Nissen: "Nothing has been said by the
IPCC. Nothing has been said in the
mainstream media. Nothing has been said
by the scientific community at large. This
is a terrible omission. It is quite scandalous."
Fossil fuel companies, and their supporters in government, seem blissfully unaware of the dangers ahead, threatening everybody on this planet.

The sea ice is declining far more rapidly than anyone expected. It is declining towards disappearance in summer months, yet the colossal negative impact of a low albedo Arctic has hardly been discussed. This is tragic because the whole situation could have been avoided with good leadership at negligible economic cost.

And as reported this week on The Ecologist, new scientific research indicates that the apparent 'pause' in global warming has, in fact, been no such thing. Instead the surplus heat - two Hiroshima bombs-worth a second - has simply been 'buried'
deep in the Pacific Ocean.

That's because of two important climate cycles, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, whose operation has masked the warming. But soon they will tip the other way and the 'Big Heat' is set to begin - a five to ten year burst of rapid warming that will be most severe in the Arctic.

Commercial advantages for some ...

If you read the mainstream media, only the positive impact of a melting Arctic is mentioned: an Arctic ripe for exploitation.

Through not grasping the huge negative impact of a low albedo Arctic, the fossil fuel companies still appear entirely happy for the sea ice to disappear as quickly as possible - the sooner the better. Therefore they naturally resist any action to save the sea ice. In particular they don't want geoengineering deployed to cool the Arctic, because it might succeed in saving it!

Certain fossil fuel companies have already invested heavily in exploiting the vast store of oil and gas in the Arctic. These companies, and the governments who support them, are preparing for a bonanza when the sea ice disappears in summer: it will be so much easier and safer to extract the fossil fuel when the sea ice and freezing conditions have gone during summer months.

Furthermore, the disappearance of the sea ice will open up the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route (formerly known as the Northeast Passage) to trade through summer months. So China and nations bordering the Atlantic (including the UK) are expecting to benefit enormously. Russia is investing heavily in ports and infrastructure to support the anticipated heavy traffic.

Various environment groups and the UK Environment Audit Committee have argued against drilling in the Arctic because they are concerned about oil spills and gas blow-outs which could ruin the local environment. They also seek to protect the wild life and Arctic ecosystem. But their arguing will be futile once the sea ice has gone in summer. It will be too late to protect the environment.

Environmentists have less concern about the opening up of the trade routes, because this will reduce CO2 emissions from transport of goods which at present have much longer journeys.

The Arctic bombshell is waiting to go off

While there is all this talk of exploiting the Arctic, little or nothing is said about the adverse effects of having an Arctic free of sea ice during summer months.

Nothing has been said by the IPCC. Nothing has been said in the mainstream media. Nothing has been said by the scientific community at large. This is a terrible omission. It is quite scandalous.

While most experts agree that there will come a time when the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice during summer months, there is no such agreement on the time-scale. Models suggest that it will take decades.

But observations of an exponential trend of sea ice decline suggest that this time could be within a decade. Scientific reports of especially rapid temperature rise in Alaska have also emerged. For example Barrow, Alaska, has experienced a 7°C temperature rise over 34 years, attributed to the decline in sea ice.

So what are the effects? During summer months, a vast area of reflective ice will have been replaced by open water, absorbing 90% of sunshine and warming the Arctic air above. It is clear that the Arctic will be warming much faster than at present - likely at over 2°C per decade.

As heat dissipates around the planet, there will be a huge contribution to global warming in the long term. Estimates put this at equivalent of 3.3 W/m2 (Flanner, 2011) or about twice the current warming from CO2.

But what are the immediate consequences of this super-rapid warming in the Arctic? At present we have an acceleration of three particular processes, affected by Arctic warming to date:
  • Firstly, we have a dramatic rise in Northern Hemisphere weather extremes, as the jet stream behaviour is disrupted.
  • Secondly we have an exponential increase in meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet, flowing through moulins on the surface of the ice into the sea and raising the sea level.
  • And thirdly we have a dramatic increase in methane emissions from the Arctic Ocean seabed.
As the temperature in the Arctic continues to increase, these processes will continue almost indefinitely. We can expect worsening Northern Hemisphere climate causing widespread crop failures; faster sea level rise causing progressive flooding of low-lying regions; and growing methane emissions leading to even more catastrophic global warming.

These are three immediate results of the switching on of heat as the Arctic Ocean enters the low sea-ice state. The combination will be devastating for all mankind - with mass starvation and mass migration liable to trigger a world war.

This is the terrifying bombshell. The bonanza will be short-lived, as the effects of a seasonally ice free Arctic Ocean begin to bite.

For a few billion dollars a year, we can save the Arctic

Something must be done to prevent the ocean entering this low-ice state. Therefore the Arctic must be cooled enough to save the sea ice.

The first moment at the end of summer that the sea ice finally disappears from the ocean is called the 'blue ocean event'. It is significant because it could mark the entry of the ocean into a permanent low-ice state for subsequent years - the point of no return. The point of no return could be a soon as next September.

By any ordinary standards, we have left it too late to cool the Arctic. But any reduction in the risk of passing the point of no return is worthwhile, when all our futures are at stake.

Fortunately researchers are increasingly confident that a stratospheric aerosol haze, produced from sulphur dioxide, SO2, could provide significant cooling of the Arctic for modest expenditure of the order of a few billion dollars per year.

This type of cooling could be replaced by cloud brightening using ultra-fine seawater droplets when the technology is ready for large-scale deployment within a year or two.

There should be no significant negative economic impact from this action, except that the resources in the Arctic become frozen assets. But they should be frozen assets in any case if global warming is to be kept below 2°C, according to a recent paper.

There should be positive political impact, because governments will be working together in a common cause to protect their own citizens and all the citizens of the world. The fossil fuel industry has to be persuaded that preserving the Arctic sea ice is essential for the future of themselves and their stakeholders.

Objections from the anti-geoengineering lobby have to be overcome, because we have no other realistic option to reduce the colossal risk of passing a point of no return this September.



John Nissen is Chair of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group
This post earlier appeared in The Ecologist

Thursday, August 16, 2012

CryoSat


The image below shows how much the older, thicker sea ice has declined over the years. This decline doesn't become apparent when focusing on sea ice extent; volume measurements are needed to reveal this decline.

Old versus new ice in Arctic: The maps show the median age of sea ice in March 1985 (left) and March 2011 (right).
Overall, the proportion of old ice has decreased. By March 2011, ice over 4 years old accounts for less than
10% of the Arctic ice cover. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder.
The screenshot below shows GHRSST volume measurements from National Centre for Ocean Forecasting website.


The European Space Agency's CryoSat promises to deliver an even clearer picture. One of the scientists analyzing the CryoSat data, Dr Seymour Laxon, said in April 2012 that CryoSat's volume estimate is very similar to that of PIOMAS, the model developed at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington.

In a recent interview, Dr Laxon said that if the current trend continues, the Arctic could be ice-free at the height of summer by the end of the decade.

John Nissen, Chair of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), comments: "Dr Laxon failed to mention the data on sea ice thickness that has been collected over many years by sea ice expert Professor Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge, who now considers that the Arctic Ocean will be seasonally free of sea ice most probably by September 2016. PIOMAS sea ice volume data suggest that a collapse in sea ice area could occur even sooner, as discussed on the AMEG blog posting."

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Huge cyclone batters Arctic sea ice

The image below shows an unusually large and powerful cyclone that was churning over the Arctic in early August 2012. Two smaller systems merged on August 5 to form the storm, which at the time occupied much of the Beaufort-Chukchi Sea and Canadian Basin, reports NASA Earth Observatory. On average, Arctic cyclones last about 40 hours; as of August 9, 2012, this storm had lasted more than five days.

This cyclone’s central sea level pressure reached about 964 millibars on August 6, 2012—a number that puts it within the lowest 3% of all minimum daily sea level pressures recorded north of 70 degrees latitude, noted Stephen Vavrus, an atmospheric scientist based at the University of Wisconsin.

Image by By NASA Goddard Photo and Video
NASA’s Aqua satellite captured above natural-color mosaic image on August 6, 2012. The center of the storm at that date was located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

The combined screenshots (6 & 8 August) below from Oceanweather Inc give an idea of size of the waves churned up by the cyclone.


The storm came in from Siberia, intensified and then positioned itself over the central Arctic, engendering 20 knot winds and 50 mph wind gusts, reports Skeptical Science.

The Arctic Sea Ice Blog covered the unfolding events well, in a series of posts including:
Many excellent comments were also added underneath these posts, e.g. by Steve Coulter who noted that "when fragmented floes are present, each irregular piece of ice acts as a sail in the wind, so the wind transfers momentum more readily to the surface. And each piece of ice, being 90% submerged, quite effectively transfers that momentum to the water. With winds moving in essentially a single direction in any given area, vast volumes of surface water are more readily put into motion. The difference in motion between the surface and deep water inevitably creates mixing."

Such mixing could mean that sediments that have been frozen until now get exposed to warmer water. This could destabilize methane contained in such sediments, either in the form of free gas or hydrates.

John Nissen, Chair of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), comments:
"There are at least three positive feedbacks working together to reinforce one another - and now a fourth on salinity:
  1. The albedo flip effect as sea ice is replaced by open water absorbing more sunlight, warming and melting more sea ice.
  2. As the sea ice gets very thin, it is liable to break up easily and get blown into open water where it will melt more easily.
  3. The open warmer water is allowing increased strength of storms, which break up the ice to make for more open water.
  4. The storms are churning up the sea to a depth of 500 metres, producing salinity at the surface that will mean slower ice formation in winter and more open water next year.
These feedbacks are dangerous for methane. AMEG has been warning that, as the sea ice retreats, storms will warm the sea bed, leading to further release of methane. In ESAS, we only need mixing to a depth of 50 metres - so a storm capable of mixing to 500 metres will really stir things up.

These feedbacks are also dangerous for food security, already damaged through climate extremes induced by Arctic warming, hence our piece in the Huffington Post.

The only way to head off catastrophe is to cool the Arctic, which must involve geoengineering as quickly as possible. We must try to remain positive and determined about this, despite the gloomy news."


Above image shows a retreat in sea ice area to 3.15521 million km2 on the 221st day of 2012, down from 3.91533 million km2 on the 212th day of 2012, from The Cryosphere Today.

The 30-days animation below, from the Naval Research Laboratory, show the recent ice speed and drift.



The 30-days animation below, also from the Naval Research Laboratory, show recent decline of the thickness of the sea ice.  


Thursday, July 5, 2012

Supplementary evidence to the EAC from John Nissen on behalf of AMEG

Supplementary evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) from John Nissen on behalf of AMEG


The Growing Crisis in the Arctic

I am writing on behalf of AMEG, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, in regard to conflicting evidence you have received during your inquiry “Protecting the Arctic”.

The inquiry is both a highly commendable reaction to, and a highly authoritative confirmation of, the fact that for the last few decades the Arctic environment is being changed at a rate unprecedented in human history. The world’s scientific establishment is unequivocal that these changes to the Arctic environment, particularly the retreating sea ice, were initiated as a consequence of global greenhouse gas emissions arising from human activities. But, as the sea ice retreats, the open water absorbs more sunshine, warming the water and melting more ice in a vicious cycle known as “positive feedback”. Thus global warming from greenhouse gases is amplified in a process known as “Arctic amplification”. There is good evidence to suggest that the Arctic is currently warming several times faster than the average over the whole planet, see Appendix.

In the course of the EAC’s ongoing inquiry it has focused on the issue of the retreating sea ice because it is this feature of the changing environment that has attracted the interests of the oil, shipping and fishing industries and is also the critical disruptive element in the Arctic environment. AMEG representatives, Professor Peter Wadhams and I, have pointed out extreme dangers associated with the retreat, warranting the designation of a planetary emergency – a crisis of unprecedented magnitude to threaten all mankind – a matter of national and international security.

The EAC invited many organisations to give their evidence on how the near future of the Arctic would play out. AMEG provided compelling evidence that not only was the rate of reduction of sea ice extent and depth much higher than is currently being predicted by models (such as used by the Hadley Centre) but that the consequential release of entrapped methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, was also accelerating, risking catastrophic exacerbation of global warming in coming decades. However the chain reaction of Arctic warming and further methane release could be stifled if the Arctic were cooled quickly by measures including geoengineering.

In her evidence, Professor Julia Slingo of the Meteorological Office flatly contradicted the AMEG evidence, particularly the evidence of rapid sea ice retreat given by Professor Wadhams. Especially, Professor Slingo said she did not find the PIOMAS volume data credible, and she was expecting to see “better data” fitting the Hadley Centre models soon. We wish to point out that it is quite extraordinary that Professor Wadhams, an acknowledged expert on sea ice who has spent many years studying sea ice thickness, should have his evidence thus repudiated. However, the committee might bear in mind that the reputation of the Hadley Centre, part of the Met Office, is largely based on their modelling expertise; and their models are still predicting the sea ice demise many decades in the future. Thus Professor Slingo was in effect attempting to defend the Hadley Centre reputation.

What the committee may not know is that there was a whole assemblage of models used by the IPCC in 2007 for their AR4 report. Most of these models predicted the sea ice survival beyond the end of the century. None of the models showed the positive feedback from sea ice retreat that we refer to above. An excuse could be made that this feedback is difficult to quantify and to model, so was omitted on procedural grounds. However the resultant predictions bore no relation to reality. Even in the 1990s, the observations of sea ice extent were deviating from the most pessimistic of the models. Then in September 2007 the sea ice extent plummeted to a record low, about 40% below the level at start of satellite measurement. Nevertheless, IPCC, supported by models from the Hadley Centre, continued on the assumption that global warming predictions could be made for the whole century without taking into account possible sea ice disappearance and massive methane release. Even with the “wake-up call” of sea ice retreat in 2007, the Hadley Centre would not admit that their models were fundamentally flawed and they continue to ignore the evidence of sea ice volume, which is showing an exponential downward trend.

Note that in their written evidence to EAC, the Met Office says: “In September 2007, sea ice extent reached an all-time low, raising the question of whether the sea ice is likely to melt more quickly than has been projected. There is, however, no evidence to support claims that this represents an exponential acceleration in the decline.” They also assure the EAC to trust models giving 2040 as the earliest date for the Arctic to become ice-free during summer. However the PIOMAS volume data clearly shows acceleration in decline, a close fit to the exponential trend curve, and a likely date for an ice-free September around 2015. (Note that as the volume approaches zero, so must the extent, implying a collapse in extent before 2015.)

And they are even now ignoring the evidence of the growing methane emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) where “vast plumes of methane bubbles, many over a kilometre across” have been reported arising from the seabed by the Russian scientists, Shakhova and Semiletov. In her oral evidence, Professor Slingo shows apparent ignorance of the Arctic methane situation, which may have misled the committee. She ignores the vast area of ESAS (over 2 million square kilometres) and claims that only a small fraction of methane from hydrates reaches the surface. That may be true for methane from the shelf margins at several hundred meters depth; but the shelf itself is mostly less than 40 metres deep, so the methane has little time to be oxidised and most of it reaches the surface. Furthermore she suggests only a small rise in temperature at the seabed, but in ESAS temperature rises of up to 6 degrees have been recorded. Far from the stratification of the water, which Professor Slingo suggests, there has been a growing turbulence as the sea ice cover is removed, resulting in this seabed warming.

This denial of the true situation might mislead the committee into thinking that there is no significant amount of methane entering the atmosphere, let alone a growth. But methane detection stations show recent spikes in methane levels which can only be easily explained by seabed origin. Furthermore satellite measurements have shown a growing anomaly of excess methane over the Arctic Ocean, again suggesting a seabed origin. All this evidence was available to the Met Office but they chose to ignore it.

Thus the Met Office (and Hadley Centre within it) is party to a complete denial of what is actually happening in the Arctic with accelerated warming, precipitous decline in sea ice and ominous rise in methane emissions.

Margaret Thatcher, in her opening of the Hadley Centre, 25th May 1990 said: “Today, with the publication of the Report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, we have an authoritative early warning system… [This] Report confirms that greenhouse gases are increasing substantially as a result of Man's activities; that this will warm the Earth's surface, with serious consequences for us all, and that these consequences are capable of prediction. We want to predict them more accurately and that is why we are opening this Centre today.”

We wish to hold the Met Office and its chief scientist to account for putting out scientifically unfounded and incorrect information to delude the government and public that no possible Arctic planetary emergency exists.

The importance of the sea ice for the planet is not in dispute; it provides a reflective mirror to reflect solar energy back into space, thus cooling the planet. James Lovelock has made his own estimate that loss of sea ice would be equivalent to the warming of all the CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere as a result of mankind’s emissions over the past century. In any event, recent research has confirmed that retreat of sea ice to date is a major cause of Arctic amplification. Therefore, if the Arctic Ocean were to become free of sea ice for several months of the year, as possible by 2020 according to the PIOMAS data, there would necessarily be a spurt in Arctic warming. This would be serious in terms of mounting disruption of the Northern Hemisphere climate system (see below). But it would also lead to an inevitable increase in the rate of methane release, risking the onset of an unstoppable methane feedback, whereby the methane causes further Arctic warming and in turn further methane emission in a positive feedback loop. A warning of the danger to all humanity from such methane feedback has been made by top scientists, such as US Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate, Steven Chu, and NASA climate scientist, Jim Hansen. The likelihood of runaway methane feedback as the sea ice disappears cannot be easily estimated from current evidence, but, even if small, it has to be considered seriously because of the extraordinary devastation were it to get going.

The current disruption of the Northern Hemisphere climate system, with an ever increasing incidence of severe heat waves on the one hand and severe flooding on the other, is likely due to the warming of the Arctic in relation to the tropics, thus reducing the temperature differential that has a stabilising effect on the jet stream and weather system patterns. There is evidence that the jet stream is now getting “stuck” such as to cause the unusual and unpredictable weather which is of considerable concern to farmers. Allowing the Arctic to continue warming is thus a very real danger to food security – which is a strong argument for cooling the Arctic, regardless of other considerations.

The evidence given by Professor Tim Lenton suggesting that the global warming produced by Arctic methane would only amount to 0.1 degree or less, by the end of the century, can be dismissed if you accept that the sea ice cover will be removed as quickly as the PIOMAS data suggests. Even climatologist Professor David Archer of the University of Chicago, who recently claimed that AMEG concerns on methane were “much ado about nothing”, admits that a release of only one fifth of the 50 Gt of methane, which researchers Shakhova and Semiletov say could be released “at any time”, would take global warming over the 2°C limit established by IPCC as “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system.

But Professors Slingo and Lenton are not alone in their misleading analysis of the situation. We are appalled that there appears to be no recognition within any part of the scientific establishment, whether Government Departments, Research Councils, Institutes or Universities, of the imminence of extremely dangerous developments that would flow from allowing the present incipient runaway situation to develop in the Arctic. This amounts to a collective denial of danger – a collective burial of heads in the sand.

Similarly there appears to be little or no willingness to consider possible actions that could be taken immediately and within the next few years, as necessary in view of the rapidity with which the position in the Arctic is deteriorating.

So, what is to be done? Clearly a major effort has to be made immediately to cool the Arctic otherwise the whole of humanity is put at risk. Even if you, as a committee, concluded that the danger is overstated by AMEG, we would argue that the effort is worthwhile as an insurance policy. Suppose that this effort is made and proves to have been unnecessary, what has been lost? The technology for cooling the Arctic will have been developed for use at a later date or for a different circumstance.

Contrast the anti-precautionary approach espoused by Professor Slingo, Professor Lenton and the people from the modelling community who submitted evidence against geoengineering just before our hearing. They would prefer to see nothing done immediately to cool the Arctic on the grounds that there is uncertainty in the situation, and it is not yet proven whether (i) the Arctic sea ice is disappearing as rapidly as AMEG warns, and (ii) the methane threat is as great as AMEG warns. This is extraordinary for people who one would expect to espouse a precautionary principle in government, as surely they would in any other situation where there is a risk to millions of lives. Unless these people can prove that there is no risk arising from collapse of sea ice and escalation of methane emissions, which clearly they cannot, the committee has a responsibility to advise government that measures to cool the Arctic need to be taken on a precautionary principle.

Governments are expected to protect their own citizens on this principle, even if the danger is not proven. We would like to quote Article 3, paragraph 3, from the UNFCCC Convention, article 3, paragraph 3:
"3. The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. To achieve this, such policies and measures should take into account different socio-economic contexts, be comprehensive, cover all relevant sources, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases and adaptation, and comprise all economic sectors. Efforts to address climate change may be carried out cooperatively by interested Parties." (Our underlining)
Note that AMEG considers that the cooling of the Arctic should be seen as one of many efforts to bring the atmosphere and oceans back towards their pre-industrial state, especially since such efforts reduce both immediate and longer-term risks arising from Arctic warming, sea ice retreat and methane release. AMEG is fully supportive of these efforts.

Why do these intelligent people from the modelling community seem to view all geoengineering as intrinsically dangerous? That may be the view in the media and among many environmentalists, but these scientists should be capable of a more rational assessment of each technique on its merits, on the limited scale as required for cooling the Arctic.

The candidate techniques AMEG proposes are all based on natural phenomena that can be observed. They can be switched off if and when any dangerous side-effects become apparent. There is nothing intrinsically dangerous about geoengineering – mankind has been doing it for millennia by altering the environment, albeit inadvertently.

Let’s look on the positive side. Cooling the Arctic and saving the sea ice has the obvious benefit of saving an entire ecosystem. Furthermore common sense suggests that geoengineering will tend to make things better because it is reversing the trends resulting from regional warming. One of the main effects of Arctic warming has been to cause disruption of regional weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, with more weather extremes and less long-term predictability of the weather. This has can only have had an adverse effect for farmers who rely on annual cycles like the monsoons. Thus cooling the Arctic should improve this situation. Yet Professor Slingo, in her oral evidence, states that, like the climate forcing from CO2 emissions, geoengineering will have "huge ramifications" implying that it is likely have serious side effects. Of course the very modelling that can be used to anticipate such side effects can also be used to avoid them, by adjusting the parameters of the techniques to be used (see note below). Thus modelling has an important part to play in the successful deployment of geoengineering.
Note: Each geoengineering technique has adjustable parameters, to allow the technique to be tailored to a particular situation. In the case of stratospheric aerosols, the height, latitude and time-of-year for the release of aerosol (or aerosol precursor) can be adjusted for maximum positive effect and minimum negative effect, using models to estimate these effects in advance. In the case of techniques to brighten or remove tropospheric clouds, more localised effects can be obtained; and parameters can be adjusted for different locations of deployment giving a great deal of flexibility as well as control.
Now we have no option other than to employ our best technology and expertise to get out of the crisis situation we have got ourselves into.

We respectfully suggest that modellers should turn their attention to modelling the effects of different geoengineering techniques, showing how unwanted side-effects can be minimised and working out how best to use various techniques in combination. This would be a useful contribution to the enormous challenge now faced to cool the Arctic. They must stop lulling the climate change community, and hence governments, into a false sense of security with their obsolete models which don't take account of reality.

In the light of the above we are writing to plead that you immediately alert the Prime Minister and his cabinet to the above conclusions: how the deteriorating situation in the Arctic has extremely threatening implications for all mankind if measures are not immediately adopted to cool the Arctic in order to reverse the current trends of retreating sea ice, escalating methane release and disruption of Northern Hemisphere climate. We realise that, under normal circumstance, we should wait for your report; but this is no ordinary situation. The sooner measures to cool the Arctic can be taken, the better. This is a daunting challenge, perhaps the biggest ever faced by humanity, but it can be met if there is a determined and concerted effort over the coming weeks and months by top scientists, engineers and yes modellers, tasked specifically to deal with the problems in the Arctic.

Only a directive from the highest levels of government is capable of initiating the programme of action required. The UN and all world governments must be alerted to the perilous situation now exposed.

Traditionally governments have tended to react to events rather than forestall them. But in this case we risk sliding irreversibly into ultimate climate catastrophe. We are close to a point of no return. Not to act as quickly as possible to halt the slide would be an abject failure of the most primary responsibilities of government. And, because such a catastrophe would threaten the life of every person on the planet, not to act would also be suicidal.

We implore the committee to give its full and serious attention to the challenge that this inquiry has thrown up, a challenge that whilst embracing the Arctic environment in its essence goes far beyond that in its enormously far-reaching implications for the rest of the planet. The committee has a unique opportunity to change the course of history.

John Nissen, Chair of AMEG
29th June, 2012

Appendix – “Life in 2032”

One of the questions raised at our hearing on 21st February concerned what life would be like in 20 years’ time, i.e. by 2032. We have considered this in respect of different scenarios, depending on methane emissions. We estimate that the Arctic is warming at about 1 degree per decade, around five times faster than the rest of the planet, and this is mainly because of sea ice retreat and more open water to absorb solar energy. In 10 years, i.e. by 2022, PIOMAS volume data suggests that the Arctic Ocean will be essentially free of ice for 6 months of the year, and the Arctic will then be warming at about 4 degrees per decade. The Arctic temperature will be 5 or 6 degrees hotter than today. The disruptive effect on Northern Hemisphere weather systems will be traumatic, leading to severe food shortages for all and starvation for millions if not billions of people.

If in addition there were an early release of the 50 Gt of methane that Shakhova and Semiletov say could be released from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf “at any time” (due to seabed warming and the instability of methane-holding structures), then we could expect over 3 degrees of global warming by 2032, liable to start runaway methane feedback. Not only would we be facing world-wide starvation but probably global conflict as well.

On the other hand if geoengineering and other measures were successful in cooling the Arctic sufficiently to bring back the sea ice to its pre-2007 volume and extent, then growth of methane emissions into the atmosphere would almost certainly be curtailed and the dreaded methane feedback avoided. The weather systems in the Northern Hemisphere weather systems would be stabilised, allowing the world farming community to plan for providing a growing world population with food. The spread of insect-born disease would be slowed. Conflicts arising from degraded environments would be reduced. And we would have more time to solve the underlying problems to ultimately remove the requirement to use geoengineering technology.

Tolerability of life in 2032 will thus depend on whether governments act quickly in response to today’s rapidly deteriorating situation by taking measures to cool the Arctic.




Editor's note: Above is a copy of the 31st submission to the Protecting the Arctic inquiry of the U.K. Environmental Audit Committee.  Submissions to date are listed below, with links to videos and submissions highlighted in yellow that are particularly relevant to points brought up by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG)


Wednesday, June 27, 2012

When the sea ice is gone


How long do you think it will take for most sea ice in the Arctic to disappear? How much change in temperature you think this would result in? 

Below an educated guess from some of the members of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group

Professor Peter Wadhams
Peter Wadhams Sc.D., Professor of Ocean Physics
and head of the Polar Ocean Physics group at the
University 
of Cambridge, U.K., researching effects
of global warming 
on sea ice, icebergs and oceans


My own view of what will happen is:
  1. Summer sea ice disappears, except perhaps for small multiyear remnant north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, by 2015-16.
  2. By 2020 the ice free season lasts at least a month and by 2030 has extended to 3 months.
  3. September sea surface temperatures are already elevated by 6-7°C over continental shelves of Arctic. As shrink back continues, the newly exposed surface water over abyssal depths warms up less in a single summer (say 2-3°C) because of deeper surface water layer (150 m) than over a shelf (50 m).
  4. The 6-7°C warming over the shelves causes offshore permafrost to shrink back and vanish over about 10 years. During this time there is elevated methane emission from offshore and from onshore warming, and global warming rates increase by about 50%.
  5. Result is that bad effects forecast for end of century (4°C warming worldwide, 10°C in Arctic) actually occur by about 2060. Speed of change is catastrophic for agriculture; warfare and population crashes ensue.
  6. Late in the day, the rapidly disintegrating civilised world tries desperate technofixes for warming and resource depletion, e.g. widespread use of nuclear power (thorium cycle), geoengineering. This may work, and bring us back from the brink of destruction after heavy losses.

Paul Beckwith
Paul Beckwith, B.Eng, M.Sc. (Physics),
Ph. D. student (Climatology) and
Part-time Professor, University of Ottawa

My projections for our planet conditions when the sea-ice has all vanished year round (PIOMAS graph projects about 2024 for this; I forecast 2020 for this) are:
  • Average global temperature: 22°C (+/- 1°C)
    (rise of 6-8°C above present day value of about 15°C)
  • Average equatorial temperature: 32°C
    (rise of 2 °C above present day value of 30°C)
  • Average Arctic pole temperature: 10°C
    (rise of 30°C above present day value of -20°C)
  • Average Antarctica pole temperature: -46°C
    (rise of 4°C above present day value of -50°C)
  • Water vapor in atmosphere: higher by 50%
    (rise of 4% over last 30 years, i.e. about 1.33% rise per decade)
  • Average temperature gradient from equator to North pole: 22°C
    (decrease of 28°C versus present day value of 50°C)
  • Very weak jet streams (driven by N-S humidity gradient and weak temperature gradient as opposed to existing large temperature gradient)
- Result: very fragmented, disjointed weather systems
- Basic weather: tropical rainforest like in some regions; arid deserts in others with few regions in between

Note: This scenario would require significant emissions of methane from the Arctic. Without this methane, the scenario would still occur but would take longer. Disclaimer: Best guess and subject to rolling revisions!


Peter Carter
Dr. Peter Carter, MD, Canada
climate-emergency-institute.org

If methane is the main driver of natural end glacial warming rather than carbon dioxide, projections of global temperature increases are out by orders of magnitude.

On sea ice:
According to Tim Lenton’s opinion that 2007 was the tipping point, the start of ice free summers would begin @2015 on a new linear trajectory. As we know the trajectory is not linear, it would probably be earlier. As most of the models project possible abrupt loss, I assume it could be any year now.

Whatever the additional warming may be [because of already unavoidable committed warming], the multiple cascading Arctic positive feedback domino effect is already unstoppable except by cooling. 


Sam Carana

Already now, temperature rises and levels of greenhouse gases are higher in the Arctic than elsewhere. The prospect is that we'll lose most sea ice within a few years, resulting in a lot more sunlight to be absorbed, adding to the temperature rise in the Arctic. 

This would push up Arctic temperatures by over 10°C within a few decades, but in some places such rises could occur in a matter of years, rather than decades

Most worrying is that such intense local warming in the Arctic can cause large abrupt methane releases from sediments. This would add a lot of additional warming that would result in massive crop losses globally, threatening global fresh water supply and causing extinction at massive scale. 

Clearly, action must be taken to reduce the danger that this will eventuate.


John Nissen 

John Nissen, MA (Cantab) Natural Sciences, 
Director of Cloudworld Ltd, U.K., Chair of
Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG)
Of late, I have been basing my estimates of Arctic warming on a current rate of 1 degree per decade, doubling after sea ice collapse, and doubling again when ice is gone for five or six months of the year. Looking at PIOMAS data, I think we can safely assume 2015 for the first doubling, and around 2020 for the second doubling. This means that between 2015 and 2020, the rate would be 2°C per decade, i.e. 1°C per 5 years. After that, it would double to 4°C per decade, up to 2030. That gives 5°C warming over 15 years.

I am now wondering whether 1°C per decade is too small, since Peter says that the water has warmed 6-7°C. However 1°C per decade is already at least 5x global warming, reckoned to be at less or equal to 0.2°C per decade.

If today, there has been 0.8°C global warming temperature rise, then, by 2030, global warming will be around 1.2°C, neglecting methane and Arctic warming. If we take Flanner's higher figure of ~4 W/m2 increase, for the Northern Hemisphere, when sea ice has gone, then that is ~2 W/m2, globally. According to Hansen net the current net forcing imbalance is under 1 W/m2, producing the 0.2°C per decade, and nearly 1.0 degree global warming temperature rise by 2020. With complete loss of snow and ice, we'd only be doubling the global warming rate. Suppose we double the rate from 2020 to 2030, then the global warming temperature rise would be around 1.4°C by 2030.

A temperature rise of 1.4°C doesn't seem too bad, but then we have the disruptive effect of the Arctic warming disrupting the NH weather systems. This is already having a serious effect, so could be pretty catastrophic by 2020, let alone 2030.

Now we add in the methane, and there's more uncertainty, except things are going to be worse, and could be a lot worse, especially if that 50 Gt of methane comes out of ESAS this decade. That could send global forcing up to around 9W/m2 (averaged over 20 years?), and warming rate up to 2°C per decade, giving us over 3°C global warming temperature rise by 2030 in the worst case. So we'd be well beyond the so-called safety limit of 2°C!

I agree with Peter that some dramatic increase in methane emission is inevitable, so my conservative estimate would be an additional 400 Mt per year by 2020. This would nearly double the methane forcing by 2030, from current 1W/m2 (including indirect effects) to around 2W/m2. This would add a temperature rise of 0.1°C, taking the total from 1.4 to 1.5°C.

So my conclusion on global warming temperature rise is between 1.5°C and 3°C by 2030, while the Arctic warms at least 5°C above current temperatures. We must not go there! Geoengineering is essential!

BTW, the warming in the Arctic would guarantee collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet this century, adding ~7 metre sea level rise and probably triggering the collapse of the WAIS adding a further 7 metres or so.



 Douglas Spence - Software Engineer,
interested party and concerned citizen 
Douglas Spence 

Now

1. Even with the Arctic ice in the present state increasingly extreme weather is already moving us closer to a point of increasing risk to agricultural output.

2. For the last few years extreme weather has worsened year on year and since we have positive feedback processes in progress we have no reason to suppose this will do anything but accelerate rapidly.

2012-13

3. I expect significant to majority sea ice loss to occur in either 2012 or 2013, and expect this to dramatically worsen the weather, causing immediate stress to global food supplies. Combined with weak economic conditions we will see stress in countries dependent on food imports or aid triggering more "Arab spring" moments in previously stable regimes. Movement of refugees will cause knock on effects in neighbouring regions.

4. Modern civilisation is fragile and dependent on global supply chains that can be disrupted both by weather and politics. We will experience an increasing incidence of problems maintaining normal operation in technologically advanced societies. There is the potential for conflict in the Arctic as new resources open up.

5. Other positive feedbacks such as methane release and forest burn off will accelerate.

2014-15

6. I expect total sea ice loss will occur during summer in either 2014 or 2015. By this time I expect agricultural output to have declined to a point where food supplies are inadequate and famine and conflict are rife. Farmers will not know what to plant or when and even acquiring seed from other climatic regions may be problematic.

7. Social conditions will be comparable to the Holomodor. People will try to eat anything and everything - earthworms, insects, each other - even in some cases their own children. Nation states will fragment and reform into smaller and increasingly violent competitive groups fighting over rapidly diminishing resources. Maintaining the supply chains required for the operation of modern technology including agriculture will be largely impossible.

8. If we see widespread war before nation states fragment there is a possibility of the use of nuclear and genetically enhanced biological weaponry. Whether through war or famine the human population will be in freefall.

2016+

9. The climate will continue to worsen as more heat flows into the system and this will become the new threat to survivors as population density becomes too low to sustain conflict. Most survivors will be eliminated, leaving the human race on the brink of extinction. A majority of the planet will cease to be habitable. The deserts will greatly expand, though this will help balance the planets thermal budget. Very few people will live to see the Arctic sea ice entirely gone throughout the year or the ruined cities drowned in the rising sea.

10. Assuming the collapse is as rapid and severe as I expect – I would expect the human population to collapse below the new carrying capacity of the planet and therefore for resource pressure to lighten once a sufficient number of people die (granted with few useful resources left and uncertainty about precisely which regions would be good prospects).

Finally

Theoretically there will be some isolated and scattered areas where the climate is still habitable, resources are sufficient and some form of agriculture can be practised. If small groups of people make it to these areas, there is a theoretical chance over many generations to recover civilisation, albeit at great disadvantage.

Disaster taxa will rapidly proliferate into the empty ecosystem, leaving the return of biodiversity to occur over a few million years, bringing the sixth great mass extinction to a close.

NB Since we are at a point where weather is a key effect, allow +/- 1 year for (good/bad) luck.


Malcolm Light
Malcolm Light, PhD, University of London
Earth science consultant


If left alone the subsea Arctic methane hydrates will explosively destabilize on their own due to global warming and produce a massive Arctic wide methane “blowout” that will lead to humanity’s total extinction,  probably before the middle of this century. AIRS atmospheric methane concentration data between 2008 and 2012 (Yurganov 2012) show that the Arctic has already entered the early stages of a subsea methane “blowout” so we need to step in as soon as we can (e.g 2015) to prevent it escalating any further.

The Arctic Natural Gas Extraction, Liquefaction & Sales (ANGELS) Proposal aims to reduce the threat of large, abrupt releases of methane in the Arctic, by extracting methane from Arctic methane hydrates prone to destabilization.

After the Arctic sea ice has gone (probably around 2015) we propose that a large consortium of oil and gas companies/governments set up drilling platforms near the regions of maximum subsea methane emissions and drill a whole series of shallow directional production drill holes into the subsea subpermafost “free methane” reservoir in order to depressurize it in a controlled manner. This methane will be produced to the surface, liquefied, stored and transported on LNG tankers as a “green energy” source to all nations, totally replacing oil and coal as the major energy source. The subsea methane reserves are so large that they can supply the entire earth’s energy needs for several hundreds of years. By sufficiently depressurizing the Arctic subsea subpermafrost methane it will be possible to draw down Arctic ocean water through the old eruption sites and fracture systems and destabilize the methane hydrates in a controlled way thus shutting down the entire Arctic subsea methane blowout.


AMEG presentation, London June 16, 2012

On June 16, 2012, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG) gave a presentation on the situation in the Arctic at the Campaign against Climate Change (CaCC) conference (see video below).


AMEG from Nick Breeze on Vimeo.

Below an web-copy of the AMEG flyer distributed at the conference:

           


EVERYTHING depends on you helping the Arctic

the Arctic is warming ever faster (1)
the sea ice volume is plummeting (2)
which prefaces a collapse in sea ice extent (3)
Arctic warming already disrupting climate,
  causing unpredictable weather for farmers
 (4)
already escalating emissions of methane (5)
  from vast store in Arctic seabed (6)
and, as methane is a potent greenhouse gas (7)
  risks runaway global warming. (8)

  Demand action to pull back from the brink
Demand that governments assess the threat
from Arctic methane release, and
Demand swift action to COOL THE ARCTIC.
   FIND OUT MORE - and do your part
Join our campaign at www.ameg.me
 Contact: AMEG chair, John Nissen johnnissen2003@gmail.com 
 email with subject line: AMEG campaign
The URL to the presentation is: http://vimeo.com/44171386
For more background, see the recent Message from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG) and the references below: 


1. The Arctic is warming ever faster
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/how-much-time-is-there-left-to-act.html

2. Sea ice volume is plummeting
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/06/arctic-sea-ice-volume-on-track-to-reach.html

3. which prefaces a collapse in sea ice extent
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/04/supplementary-evidence-by-prof-peter.html

4. unpredictable weather for farmers
http://global-warming.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977688104

5. escalating emissions of methane
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/05/striking-increase-of-methane-in-arctic.html

6. from vast store in Arctic seabed
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/need-for-geo-engineering.html

7. methane is a potent greenhouse gas
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/05/video-and-poster-methane-in-arctic.html

8. runaway global warming
http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/2011/04/runaway-global-warming.html