Methanepocalypse Not Now

Timothy Birdnow

One of the cornerstones of catastrophic global warming theory is a warming Arctic will lead to a release of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas and thus will lead to a runaway greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is ultimately negligible in the theory; it is simply the fuse. The explosive is this methane.

Well...

Seems the Arctic isn't cooperating.

Researchers from Stockholm University looked into claims that catastrophically large amounts of the gas were being released into the atmosphere from the Indian Ocean, although the releases had not been spotted by atmospheric monitoring stations.

The scientists used data from an icebreaker in the eastern Arctic Ocean to directly measure the methane sea-to-air flux, the exchange through which the ocean and atmosphere interact.

"By understanding the airflow over the sea surface, and simultaneously measuring methane concentrations, we can determine how much methane is coming out of the ocean,” Stockholm University researcher Brett Thornton told Science Daily.

The researchers saw hotspots of methane emissions from the bubbles coming from the seafloor that were up to 25 times higher than emissions from onshore wetlands.

"The peak emissions are indeed large, but at the same time, they are also extremely limited in area,” Thornton said. "Yes, there is methane leaking from the Arctic Ocean to the atmosphere. But, at least for now, it is not globally important to atmospheric methane and global warming.”

Nobody expected NOT to find some methane leaking; it's going to happen in the Arctic, where much is frozen in the permafrost. Methane is a naturally occurring gas that is the primary component of natural gas. It is a ubiquitous bi-product of chemical and biological processes and it is often seen in swamps where it produces a fetid smell.

In the Arctic is freezes into the ground.

Methane is a much more efficient greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, trapping much more heat in the atmosphere.

So the fear is that if the polar regions melt a large, sudden release of methane will then lead to an overall atmospheric warming which will lead to more methane release, which will lead to more warming...

But it looks like Nature is not cooperating with the theory.

And why should it?  Overall there has been no planetary warming outside of the natural increase from the ending of the Little Ice Age since the latter part of the last century.

So researchers have found that something stinks, but it's not the swamp gas...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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