Also, I haven't read the literature, but has anyone actually measured the bubbles to show that it's methane and not H2S, NxOy, CO2, etc. Granted the former are probably not going to be important on land/freshwater. The images of the undersea plumes are impressive. Would be really interesting to do some chem profiling in the water column (even just pH) to show effects of active CH4 oxidation to CO2, carbonate undersaturation, etc. Should be some major ocean acidification going on locally, with bio impacts. -Greg
--- On Fri, 1/6/12, M V Bhaskar <bhaskarmv...@gmail.com> wrote: > From: M V Bhaskar <bhaskarmv...@gmail.com> > Subject: [geo] Re: Further thoughts on Arctic methane > To: "geoengineering" <geoengineering@googlegroups.com> > Cc: bhaskarmv...@gmail.com > Date: Friday, January 6, 2012, 3:16 AM > Thanks Charlie for posting the link > to Archer's article. > > The article says - > > >"On land, there is lots of methane in the thawing > Arctic, exploding lakes and what not. This methane is > probably produced by decomposition of thawing organic > matter." > > So quite a bit of the methane being released into the > atmosphere is > freshly produced methane and not release of frozen > methane. > > >"And so far, the sources of methane from high latitudes > are small, relative to the big player, which is wetlands in > warmer climes. It is very difficult to know whether the > bubbles are a brand-new methane source caused by global > warming, or a response to warming that has happened over the > past 100 years, or whether plumes like this happen all the > time. In any event, it doesn’t matter very much unless > they get 10 or 100 times larger, because high-latitude > sources are small compared to the tropics." > > This is a very important observation. > > The methane being released in the Arctic is visible to the > naked eye > and what we see is often quite dramatic - bubbles and > flames from > lakes but the methane being released in tropics is not > visible - the > silent killer. > > So are we just getting carried away by what we see. > > regards > > Bhaskar > > > On Jan 5, 10:53 pm, Charlie Zender <zen...@uci.edu> > wrote: > > David Archer's new piece on Methanageddon is > worthwhile reading > > > > http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/much-ado-about-... > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the > Google Groups "geoengineering" group. > To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
