You mean "methanotrophic" bacteria. - Greg
Further to Mike's comments:
When methane seeps into sea water and gets dissolved, it gets
attacked by methanogenic bacteria that cosumes this to carbon
dioxide. The carbon dioxide then dissolves again into water.
However, there are about 22,000 methane clathrate explosion craters
in the Arctic. The largest methane escape crater on the sea floor
measures over 750 km2 in area.
Royal Society's science book of the year award for 2008 was awarded
to Mark Lynas' "The Six Degrees" which refers to the methane
clatrate explosion sites in the Arctic sea beds.
The off-shore methane craters have resulted from violent gas bursts
of methane. As methane itself is soluble to a sea water in a limited
degree, a gradual build up of carbon dioxide is often required to
necessitate the nucleation of dissolved gases.
Carbon dioxide is dissolving in cold and deep waters sometimes 5
times of the volume of water or more, methane is dissolving
considerably too, but not nearly as much as carbon dioxide. When
outgassing event and methane clathrate explosions do occur, methane
that has been converted to carbon dioxide acts as the active
ingredient of gas nucleation.
Michel Halbwachs has successfully neutralised three deep water
methane/carbon dioxide laden deepwater pockets that have been
nucleating (or pose major risk of gas nucleation). He has three
successful projects under management on controlled outgassing of
highly dissolved deep water pockets that can cause fatalities if gas
is not leaked out.
As methane clathrates dissolve in innumerable sites across deep
Arctic lakes and coastal deep water pockets (that lack adequate
water circulation), as the methane leaks out and gets converted to
carbon dioxide, it builds up and eventually starts to sizzle out
(like champagne) when there are disturbances in the vertical water
column, or excess heating.
These can also be stirred and triggered by vessels traveling over
and can be extremely dangerous due to density of nucleating water
being much lower due to its high, nucleated, foamy gas content. When
the carbon dioxide sizzles out, the methane comes out with it.
The high carbon dioxide content of water may also shut down some
methanogenic bacteria, this effectively stopping further conversion
of methane into carbon dioxide. Thus, the proportion of gas
dissoleved will eventually consist high volumes of methane as well.
I have also been in touch with some scientists who believe that
there were recently a huge methane explosion resulting from the
conical deep water basin of Lake Cheko, where a sub lake bed may
have collapsed due to melting of permafrost layer that was retaining
a gas field. The lake and trespassing river may have fallen into the
cavity of gas field triggering huge methane explosion 3-5 miles
above nearby Tunguska forest in spring 1908. This explosion killed
and injured about half a dozen people due to its remoteness.
Microdiamonds and molten rock materials have been discovered. The
standard idea is that it was a meteorite impact (a bolide fire ball)
rather than an on-shore methane explosion.
For the COP15/COP16 intermediate summit at Copababamba, I yesterday
received petition to put forward from the First Nations' as some
ancient first nations of the Americas recall seeing these immense
fireballs, what they say, at the end of ice age, perhaps in Beringia
when they were forced to move out as sea levels rose which area is
near to the methane explosions and migrants came roughly via the
same area (North East Coast of Siberia) as Mark Lynas', Euan Nisbet
and others reported findings of sea floor methane escape craters.
Back in July 2008 there were also huge explosion on the North West
Passage, Nunavut, Canada, about ten days to two weeks after the NW
passage cleared itself off sea ice, which was second consecutive
summer when the area was sea ice free. The sound were heard hundreds
of miles away and whales were spotted moving away from the area.
Therefore, we need to keep in mind and search for the still deep
water pockets or areas that may be excessively accummulating methane
and carbon dioxide when permafrost soils and methane clathrated sea
beds are melting.
If you know of any extremely carbon dioxide and methane laden sites
(still deep water pockets) please contact Michel Halwachs who has
been successfully contracted to defuse these. It would also make
sense to controllably neutralise some of them and burn nucleating
methane-carbon dioxide mixtures rather than letting them GHGs to go
for birds.
Wint kind regards,
Veli Albert Kallio
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 09:55:56 -0500
Subject: Re: [geo] Methane - time for realism
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
While I wholeheartedly agree that methane is a critical issue, it
would sure be nice if they got the facts right.
Consider this paragraph: "Dr. Shakhova said that undersea methane
ordinarily undergoes oxidation as it rises to the surface, where it
is released as carbon dioxide. But because water over the shelf is
at most about 50 meters deep, she said, the gas bubbles to the
surface there as methane. As a result, she said, atmospheric levels
of methane over the Arctic are 1.85 parts per million, almost three
times as high as the global average of 0.6 or 0.7 parts per million.
Concentrations over the shelf are 2 parts per million or higher."
It is simply not the case that the concentration over much of the
globe is currently 0.6 or 0.7 parts per million. That may well have
been the preindustrial concentration that was being referred to, and
if that is the case, that correction is needed. Alternatively, they
should report the global average concentration as roughly 1.6 to 1.7
parts per million, as is clearly shown in the global observations
(see
<http://*instaar.colorado.edu/sil/images/ch4rug_490px.jpg>http://*instaar.colorado.edu/sil/images/ch4rug_490px.jpg
).
Mike
On 3/5/10 5:11 PM, "John Nissen"
<<http://*cloudworld.co.uk/>[email protected]> wrote:
<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/011011.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/011011.html
Methane Melt: The Most Important Story You Don't Follow
Alex Steffen
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/bios/alex.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/bios/alex.html>
, 5 Mar 10
We've written before about the danger that climate change will lead
to the thawing and release of methane frozen on the ocean floor, and
indeed the worrisome news that some scientists were observing
patches of Arctic sea foaming with gas bubbles from "methane
chimneys" rising from the sea floor
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/008702.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/008702.html>
.
Now, researchers in Alaska have found a similar process underway
<<http://*www.*nytimes.com/2010/03/05/science/earth/05methane.html?em>http://*www.*nytimes.com/2010/03/05/science/earth/05methane.html?em>
:
Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the university and a leader of the
study, said it was too soon to say whether the findings suggest that
a dangerous release of methane looms. In a telephone news
conference, she said researchers were only beginning to track the
movement of this methane into the atmosphere as the undersea
permafrost that traps it degrades.
But climate experts familiar with the new research reported in
Friday's issue of the journal Science that even though it does not
suggest imminent climate catastrophe, it is important because of
methane's role as a greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide is far
more abundant and persistent in the atmosphere, ton for ton
atmospheric methane traps at least 25 times as much heat.
Until recently, undersea permafrost has been little studied, but
work so far shows it is already sending surprising amounts of
methane into the atmosphere, Dr. Shakhova and other researchers are
finding.
Last year, scientists from Britain and Germany reported that they
had detected plumes of methane rising from the Arctic seabed in the
West Spitsbergen area, north of Scandinavia. At the time, they said
they had begun their work hoping to gain data to predict future
emissions and had not expected to find evidence that the process was
under way.
It is "indispensable" to keep track of methane in the region, Martin
Heimann of the Max Planck Institute in Germany said in a commentary
accompanying the Science report. So far, Dr. Heimann wrote, methane
contributions from Arctic permafrost have been "negligible." He
added: "But will this persist into the future under sustained
warming trends? We do not know."
In an e-mail message, Euan G. Nisbet of the University of London, an
expert on atmospheric methane, said the situation "needs to be
watched carefully."
Atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled since
pre-industrial times, Dr. Heimann wrote. Most of it comes from human
activities including energy production, cattle raising and the
cultivation of rice. But about 40 percent is natural, including the
decomposition of organic materials in wetlands and frozen wetlands
like permafrost.
Dr. Shakhova said that permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf,
peat land that flooded as sea levels rose after the last ice age, is
degrading in part because runoff from rivers that feed the Arctic
Ocean is warmer than in the past.
She estimated that annual methane emissions from the East Siberian
Arctic Shelf total about seven teragrams. (A teragram is 1.1 million
tons.) By some estimates, global methane emissions total about 500
teragrams a year.
Dr. Shakhova said that undersea methane ordinarily undergoes
oxidation as it rises to the surface, where it is released as carbon
dioxide. But because water over the shelf is at most about 50 meters
deep, she said, the gas bubbles to the surface there as methane. As
a result, she said, atmospheric levels of methane over the Arctic
are 1.85 parts per million, almost three times as high as the global
average of 0.6 or 0.7 parts per million. Concentrations over the
shelf are 2 parts per million or higher.
A huge release of one-frozen methane is (potentially) almost the
definition of a feedback loop
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/010802.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/010802.html>
, perhaps even a tipping point into runaway climate change.
Luckily, we're not there yet. Scientists have been very clear to say
that while these field observations are surprising and disturbing,
they do not yet indicate a catastrophe. We need to wait for more
data to figure out if it's time to panic yet.
In the meantime, we need to focus even more strongly on four solution spaces:
1) Getting to a zero net emissions
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/007879.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/007879.html>
economy as quickly as possible. It's very clear now that we can do
this at a net gain for society, with more (and more wide-spread)
prosperity for most people, and that it's largely the opposition of
entrenched interests that's preventing us from making huge strides
forward: this needs to change.
2) Implementing climate-adaptive ecological restoration,
safeguarding
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/004253.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/004253.html>
ecosystem services and researching
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/007126.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/007126.html>
soil carbon sequestration
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/local/canada/archives/008992.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/local/canada/archives/008992.html>
and other practices that have multiple benefits while pulling
greenhouse gasses from the air. We need to be helping the planet's
natural systems heal towards resilience as much as we possibly can.
3) Engaging in a stronger and more realistic debate about
geoengineering, its limits and its politics
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/008364.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/008364.html>
, especially since news of potential tipping points always
accelerates calls for geoengineering research, even deployment.
Geoengineering's main use in the climate debate at the moment is as
a propaganda tool by those seeking to stall action on emissions
reduction
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/009784.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/009784.html>
; that doesn't mean that we don't need to discuss what mega-scale
answers might be possible should we find tipping points sliding past
more quickly than we feared.
4) Building psychological resilience
<<http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/007906.html>http://*www.*worldchanging.com/archives/007906.html>
in the face of huge and alarming planetary changes. News like this
is disturbing. We need to find ways, as a culture, as communities
and as individuals, to understand disturbing changes without losing
our balance. Psychologically wrecked people are no good to
themselves, others or the planet. We need to promote the capacity to
be healthy and happy despite monumental challenges.
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