Talk:Arctic methane emissions

Use of subpar references and undue weight
I've slashed rather a lot of text, which was dependent on references from the Independent, which is not an acceptable scientific reference. Further the text was referencing scientific papers, which had a citation count less than 10, which must be considered undue weight.

Another section was cut, because the text did not follow the reference, and specify the conditions for a large release of marine clathrates. The emphasis seems to have been on the alarming nature instead of the probability or conditions for such a release. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Why not improve the references instead of taking a 'slash and burn' approach to the article. Revert coming, I think.Andrewjlockley (talk) 12:22, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've replaced and cleaned up the deleted material. I've removed unpublished research, secondary sources, arguably unscientific terms, repetition and other generally weak bits.  This could have been done first time round, rather than the destruction that was actually inflicted.  Please use a scalpel, not an axe.  Please DO NOT REVERT my work without discussion.  It took me about 4 hours.Andrewjlockley (talk) 01:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Evap
Re. It isn't exactly wrong, but it is misleading (the only substantial effect on evap is through the sfc t difference). But more to the point, why exactly do we care about evap in a methane release article? This is not the arctic climate article William M. Connolley (talk) 13:20, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Synthesis
Here is the reason i give in the Synthesis tag:
 * Whole section makes an argument that none of the references support or even hint at. It takes methane figures, and boldly tosses them around, without any consideration as to what is likely or even possible to be released. At the same time, it takes regional and local facts and extrapolates them to global. And finally it is all under a headline of "Risk of abrubt climate change" something that the references absolutely *do not* support. (with the possible exception of one abstract in GRA, which hasn't been cited once (according to google scholar, ie. undue weight)).

Whats rather sad, is that i believe this has been raised before... --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've retitled it, but as usual I don't quite understand exactly what you believe to be the further problems that need correcting. Where's the syn?  What's the source(s) that have been misrepresented? Andrewjlockley (talk) 21:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks fine to me - I'll de-tag if you don't respond. Andrewjlockley (talk) 23:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, i have no doubt it looks fine to you. But how come you haven't mentioned B&A as well as the CCSP conclusions? That methane release won't be abrupt, and that the release will take from 1-100,000 years. Why are you concentrating on the Shakhova papers ... which (as i've told you before) haven't got many citations? What does the IPCC say? (hint: same as B&A as well as the CCSP)
 * My conclusion here is that you are focusing on catastrophy, and choosing the papers accordingly, while at the same time either ignoring or misrepresenting(B&A) the literature that contradicts it. How come? Its a large soup of WP:UNDUE. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * B&A is about ocean floor clathrates, not land based organic matter which is subject to decomposition anaerobically as temps rise Andrewjlockley (talk) 00:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Image spat
Thanks WMC [PA removed]. However, isn't it pretty obvious that a large river transporting fresh water to a frozen sea is dumping heat energy into that sea, sufficient to raise temperatures? In fact, it's inconceivable that anything else can be happening. I've searched the literature but it appears that no-one's thought this question worthy of research. Andrewjlockley (talk) 00:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Depth is the key. Thermocline is the other. And finally there is the small matter of just how much energy is transported vs. volume to warm vs. escape to surroundings. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Note Methane concentration image is from 2005, now 10 years old. A new one is available here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.fig2.png. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.122.220.124 (talk) 00:20, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Stale URL
I tried to find reference "Permafrost Threatened by Rapid Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice, NCAR Study Finds" but got a page not found. --Netsettler (talk) 07:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC) Fixed Kurtkimber (talk) 19:54, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Shakhova et al. (2008)
We have:


 * Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 Gt of Carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5-10% of that area is subject to puncturing by open taliks. They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve.[13]

That seems rather excitable to me. And [13] is to an EGU abstract - not a peer-reviewed paper. If it hasn't made it into a paper, since 2008, it should probably be removed William M. Connolley (talk) 09:02, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's been all over the news for eight years with dozens of video interviews and cites to her research in peer reviewed articles in nature and science. Essentially the problem with having 50 Gtc in a shallow pool is its melting like permafrost. Not only that but it doesn't have time to be eaten by methane specialized bacteria as it heads for the surface. The adjacent 1400 Gtc that's much deeper could still be triggered to release by the 50 Gtc eruption. 142.0.102.108 (talk) 04:33, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It's been reviewed extensively by specialists in the arctic such as the arctic methane group as research continued between 2008 and 2011. These would include some of the most prestigious scientists in the IPCC. Many of them find discussion of 1400 Gtc of Methane clathrates already emiting from as much as 150 km diameter pool in the ESAS of which 50 Gtc could be released by warming arctic ocean temperatures 1 degree, losing sea ice so the storms cause it to move churning up the shallow clathrates (which are mostly fossil permafrost from the end of the last glacation covered by rising sea levels then) or by drilling as authorized under the Methane Hydrates Act of 2000 in the US alarming rather than exciting. The damage caused by release of 50 Gtc would be an instantaneous rise in average global temperature of 1.8 degree and $ hundreds of trillions of damage to coastal cities from sea level rise, flooding, storm surges.


 * It's one reason Obama says he's going to the arctic this week. 142.0.102.83 (talk) 00:49, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Where are all the updates
In 2011, Russian scientists discovered large methane plumes in the East Siberian Arctic Ocean measuring hundreds of metres across. Most of the articles available thus far for potential citations are news links although journal articles may soon be published:. ~ AH1 (discuss!) 17:46, 25 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes I agree, the chart of CH4 measurements is really old as well, I believe there has been significant rise since 2005 and very high spikes of methane reported on several sites summer 2012. Reading over this whole article, it almost seems "edited to the bone" to make the situation look better than it really is. We need more data here for people to make good public judgement about the subject matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcldude (talk • contribs) 14:19, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Strongly agree. The editing of anything to do with climate change, global warming, sea level rise, IPCC reports have been designed to damp down actual findings to the extremely conservative consensus necessary to get IPCC agreement by all the worlds scientists that climate change is anthropogenic. For this reason the research of Russian scientists on 1400 Gtc of Methane off the EASA of which 50 Gtc could be released at any time was not included in the 2014 report V and is not included here. If ordinary people were to discover that this is due to fossil fuel energy companies trying to get the last penny of profit from the arctic regardless of the damage, even with that being on the order of a sixth global extinction event, they might prefer to be given the unedited version of all the facts to decide for themselves whether its of concern or not.142.0.102.83 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:59, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I found some related articles, but I'm not from the field, and I don't feel confortable in editing this article. Here it is what I found:









—Arthurfragoso (talk) 20:56, 21 June 2019 (UTC)



From this other article, the current leak at ESAS is between 8 and 17 Tg, that from my understanding is very low, but it stores a huge reserve that if leaked could be catastrophic.

"The ESAS is the region of the WO where >80% of the world’s predicted subsea permafrost and associated permafrost-related hydrates exist. It was suggested that >1400 Gt of CH4 could be preserved in the seabed of the ESAS [90]. The current annual emission of CH4 to the atmosphere was calculated to be between 8 and 17 Tg annually [19,20]; this implies, conservatively, that equal amounts could have been potentially released annually during the previous climate epochs if permafrost had not restricted CH4 flux. Therefore, due to such restriction, during the time of one glacial period (~100 kYrs) >800 Gt of CH4 could have accumulated in the ESAS seabed as postponed potential fluxes. This amount of pre-formed gas preserved in the ESAS suggests a potential for possible massive/abrupt release of CH4, whether from destabilizing hydrates or from free gas accumulations beneath permafrost; such a release requires only a trigger."

"To assess whether sudden, large-scale CH4 releases are likely to occur in the future, there exists a need to investigate the characteristics of migration pathways and to identify the factors controlling CH4 vertical flux from the seabed, through the water column, and into the atmosphere. A new challenge is the unknown scale of the ice scouring mechanism of CH4 release; this mechanism could unroof an ascending gas front in the upper sediment layers, opening gas-migration pathways for underlying gas [22]. The relative importance of the various flux components should also be independently evaluated by detailed observations of atmospheric mixing ratios throughout the year. In this regard, establishing a monitoring network (including non-coastal observatories, satellites, unmanned aircraft, helicopter surveys, and summer cruises) over the entire area of the ESAS is of critical importance."

—Arthurfragoso (talk) 00:14, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

20 year study shows little methane release in warming
From Nature Magazine. Long-term warming restructures Arctic tundra without changing net soil carbon storage

Seeta A. Sistla,	 John C. Moore,	 Rodney T. Simpson,	 Laura Gough,	 Gaius R. Shaver	 & Joshua P. Schimel AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author Nature (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12129 Received 27 November 2012 Accepted 28 March 2013 Published online 15 May 2013 Article tools Citation Reprints Rights & permissions Metrics High latitudes contain nearly half of global soil carbon, prompting interest in understanding how the Arctic terrestrial carbon balance will respond to rising temperatures1, 2. Low temperatures suppress the activity of soil biota, retarding decomposition and nitrogen release, which limits plant and microbial growth3. Warming initially accelerates decomposition4, 5, 6, increasing nitrogen availability, productivity and woody-plant dominance3, 7. However, these responses may be transitory, because coupled abiotic–biotic feedback loops that alter soil-temperature dynamics and change the structure and activity of soil communities, can develop8, 9. Here we report the results of a two-decade summer warming experiment in an Alaskan tundra ecosystem. Warming increased plant biomass and woody dominance, indirectly increased winter soil temperature, homogenized the soil trophic structure across horizons and suppressed surface-soil-decomposer activity, but did not change total soil carbon or nitrogen stocks, thereby increasing net ecosystem carbon storage. Capitalismojo (talk) 03:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

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Excerpts too long?
I wonder if the excerpts that transcribe text from permafrost carbon cycle and clathrate gun hypothesis really have to be this long? (pinging User:InformationToKnowledge) I am more used to shorter excerpts, essentially pointing people across to the other article rather. Furthermore, both those text blocks are written rather like an academic literature review, not like encyclopedic text. Things like "Research by Klaus Wallmann et al. 2018 concluded that " or "Hong et al. 2017 studied methane seepage " I think this language should be adjusted. Author names don't have to be stated explicitly, not even the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report has to be stated explicitly so often. EMsmile (talk) 11:08, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * P.S. The work that you did in October 2022 on this article in this edit was really good. You helped to make this article much more up to date and remove outdated content. Thanking you for this. EMsmile (talk) 11:17, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I had less experience back then, and yes, in hindsight, this excerpt style wasn't the best. I am sure that by now there are a few scientific reviews on this exact subject which I could use to structure the article better. Another thing I'll have to do eventually if no-one else does.
 * For now, I do not think it's an immediate priority: while I suspect that this article was created after the topic got a lot of attention in the media in 2000s/early 2010s under the impression that there was rapid and unexpected growth in emissions from this area, the current scientific consensus seems to say that this isn't the case and it's actually surprisingly stable for now. Given that, the article is probably adequate for conveying this point for the foreseeable future. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:22, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I've taken out some of the excerpts now because they made it too confusing to follow the logical flow. Also, please should just click through to the sub-article if they want to know more about those sub-topics. EMsmile (talk) 11:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)