NOAA: Fifth warmest April on record:
[Via Climate Progress]
[Crossposted at Path to Sustainable]
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reported last month:
Based on preliminary data, the globally-averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record for April, and the January-April year-to-date period tied with 2003 as the sixth warmest on record.
lt is worth noting “the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) transitioned from a cold phase (La Niña) to ENSO-neutral conditions during April 2009,” which kept things on the coolish side. If we stay neutral (as most models currently predict), it’ll get hotter and if go into an El Niño (as some models predict) then we should be back to setting record temperatures.
And no, I don’t think the monthly data tell us much about the climate. But I know reporting it annoys the deniers. More seriously, it is definitely worth seeing where it is warming [click to enlarge]:
[More]
The further north you go, the higher the temperature increase. Higher temperatures may sound nice if you have to deal with a Siberian winter but there is a very good reason to want to keep the far north very cold – methane.There are huge amounts of methane held in the permafrost that will be released if the temperature keeps rising. From Climate Progress:
• NOAA recently reported: “Methane levels rose in 2008 for the second consecutive year after a 10-year lull,”
• Scientific analysis suggests the rise in 2007 methane levels came from Arctic wetlands (see here).
• Siberia contains probably the world’s largest amount of carbon locked away in the permafrost (see here).
• The permafrost is increasingly not so perma (see here).
• Much of that carbon would be released as methane, which is 23 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Release of methane from the permafrost could have a huge effect on climate change as methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide with a global warming potential 25 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100 year timeline. And we have no way of putting it back.
The carbon cycle does not deal with this methane because it is sequestered from the cycle. What would be the effect of releasing this much methane?
Well, the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere is about 750 gigatons. We currently add about 8 gigatons of carbon a year to the atmosphere due to fossil fuel burning. And the carbon cycle is having a hard time dealing with that, resulting in increasing amounts of carbon dioxide seen in the atmosphere and in the increasing acidity of the oceans due to dissolved carbon dioxide.
The amount of methane found in the Arctic regions is equivalent to about 400 gigatons of carbon, more than half the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere (although this article indicates the amount of methane in the permafrost is closer to 1200 gigatons). Even for the lower number this is 50 times more carbon than we add to the atmosphere in a single year by burning fossil fuels. This is a large amount to add to the carbon cycle. But it gets worse.
400 gigatons is equivalent to 50 years of fossil fuel burning (8 gigatons x 50). But methane itself is 25 times more potent in heating the planet than carbon dioxide, so the effect on warming would be closer to burning 25 times more fossil fuels than we currently do for the next 50 years. That would have a huge impact on temperatures worldwide.
Alternatively, depending on how rapid the release is, releasing all the methane would have the same effect on global warming as increasing the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere by about 13 times (400 gigatons x 25/750 gigatons).
If all the methane is released rapidly, it would be even worse than anything we are currently doing. There would be a huge influx of carbon in the carbon cycle, with most of it being a strong greenhouse gas. The cycle would most likely stabilize with much higher amounts of greenhouse gases with higher warming potentials.
Even the release of a small amount, say 10%, over a rapid period of time would have huge ramifications.
It is the release of these huge deposits of methane that has many scientists worried. If we have any hope of stabilizing the world’s temperature we have to keep these deposits of methane housed and sequestered in the permafrost. We have to make sure they are not released rapidly so that the carbon cycle can have some chance of dealing with the methane and not increase its atmospheric lifetime.
Rapid release of the methane would be catastrophic. Release of methane is postulated for causing one of the world’s great extinction events. It would alter the environment we have lived in for the last 10,000. We might not even be able to adapt fast enough to save much of our population.
So watch the methane.
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