Posted on 08/10/2005 6:24:25 PM PDT by aculeus
Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting
A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.
The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today.
The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.
Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.
Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.
"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."
In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990 and 2100, but the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions.
"These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren't known about then. They had no idea how much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner.
Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. Scientists are particularly concerned about the permafrost, because as it thaws, it reveals bare ground which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the rate at which the permafrost thaws.
Siberia's peat bogs have been producing methane since they formed at the end of the last ice age, but most of the gas had been trapped in the permafrost. According to Larry Smith, a hydrologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, the west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70bn tonnes of methane, a quarter of all of the methane stored in the ground around the world.
The permafrost is likely to take many decades at least to thaw, so the methane locked within it will not be released into the atmosphere in one burst, said Stephen Sitch, a climate scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter.
But calculations by Dr Sitch and his colleagues show that even if methane seeped from the permafrost over the next 100 years, it would add around 700m tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, roughly the same amount that is released annually from the world's wetlands and agriculture.
It would effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to 25% increase in global warming, he said.
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the finding was a stark message to politicians to take concerted action on climate change. "We knew at some point we'd get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming, but this could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases.
"If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide," he said. "There's still time to take action, but not much.
"The assumption has been that we wouldn't see these kinds of changes until the world is a little warmer, but this suggests we're running out of time."
In May this year, another group of researchers reported signs that global warming was damaging the permafrost. Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, told a meeting of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that her team had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia. At the hotspots, methane was bubbling to the surface of the permafrost so quickly that it was preventing the surface from freezing over.
Last month, some of the world's worst air polluters, including the US and Australia, announced a partnership to cut greenhouse gas emissions through the use of new technologies.
The deal came after Tony Blair struggled at the G8 summit to get the US president, George Bush, to commit to any concerted action on climate change and has been heavily criticised for setting no targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The land won't lie flat. Once the permafrost starts to thaw it moves around and your flat field gets unmanageable.
More like a plague of mosquitos season.
And I was always told that "they weren't making any more waterfront property."
That's why I mentioned it needs to stabilize first. I just don't know how long that would take.
News Flash from outside of this world!
Sun: More activity since 1940 than in previous 1150 years, combined
Guess driving those SUV's on the Sun is really screwing it up. Need to pass law to only allow SUV driving on Sun during nighttimes.
Mercury: Unexpected polar ice discovered, along with a surprisingly strong intrinsic magnetic field … for a supposedly “dead” planet
Uh Oh, Global Warming here caused by humans is creating Global Cooling on Mercury! Maybe we should send Mercury a few herds of cows to increase the methane levels.
Venus: 2500% increase in auroral brightness, and substantive global atmospheric changes in less than 30 years
Obviously caused by humans here on Earth, specifically located in No. America.
Earth: Substantial and obvious world-wide weather and geophysical changes
But we knew that- all human caused, obviously. Couldn't possibly be part of a natural cycle.
Mars: “Global Warming,” huge storms, disappearance of polar icecaps
We're not only despoiling our own planet but causing major distruptions on our neighbors also.
Jupiter: Over 200% increase in brightness of surrounding plasma clouds
Probably where all our ozone went when we drove it off by driving all those nasty SUV's. When will we ever learn?
Saturn: Major decrease in equatorial jet stream velocities in only ~20 years, accompanied by surprising surge of X-rays from equator
How much more evidence is needed to prove that all those human X-rays machines, mammograms, CAT scans, MRI's and other such stuff is killing Saturnians?
Uranus: “Really big, big changes” in brightness, increased global cloud activity.
What more can you say about clouds around Ur Anus (other than they're probably methane from farting cows on Earth)?
Neptune: 40% increase in atmospheric brightness.
Probably due to reflections of the sun off all the bald heads of humans lounging around the beach, contrary to all the dire warnings about UV caused cancer.
Pluto: 300% increase in atmospheric pressure, even as Pluto recedes farther from the Sun.
Obviously we're driving even the planets away from us! We're sending it so much stress, its blood pressure is rising. Quick, remove all the salt from Pluto and send blood pressure meds.
As an alternative to "the sky is falling and humans are the cause" theory, maybe it would be good to look at the big picture and realize that maybe... just maybe, the Solar System is cycling through its changes. And being a small, miniscule piece of protoplasm that humanity is in the really big picture, maybe mankind just isn't the cause.
Jeez, these people have supremely big egos... like those who knew that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. And that it was flat, too!
What maroons!
Note: All of the above solar system changes are not fantasy or theory but facts and scientific data, from a variety of highly credible institutions (including NASA itself). This material has been publicly available for nearly a decade in some cases.
Where are they going to put the gulags now that Siberia is going temperate?
Just a few years. There are several well-established fields here abouts that were severely permafrosted fifty years ago.
Kinda makes you wonder what the weather was like when this happened.
http://www.s8int.com/boneyard4.html
LOL!
Why stop there? We should exterminate all life on the planet to restore it to it's pristine state.
There have been many Ice Ages. There was a particularly severe one at the end of the Permian Period, about 230 million years ago, before the rise of the dinosaurs.
More recently, there has been a sequence of glaciations, identified as the Wisconsan, Illinoisan, Kansan, and Nebraskan Ice Ages, each lasting on the order of ten thousand years, and with Interglacial ages lasting several times longer. ( Dunbar, Historical Geology )
Of course, some have wondered whether we're in an interglacial period now, with more glaciations in the offing. ( no cite, I just remember this kind of speculation. )
Thanks. Let's show our support for the Friends of Venus by repeating the chant:
Oh - wah - ta - jur - ky - am
repeat
faster
If the permafrost were to melt wouldn't the moss in the peatmoss start growing at a faster rate and act as a carbon sink by taking in excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and offsetting any higer temperatures?
Bump for later reading. Make sure we pass a law that says no one is allowed to light any candles in Siberia.
Here is a link to Siberia's historical temperature records, most go back to 1917.
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Russia
This one for instance is in the heart of Siberia. There is no increase in temperatures at all.
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/dikson.gif
It continues to surprises me that all these studies get reported saying the temperatures have been increasing 3 Deg. C or something in the arctic when the actual measured records show nothing of the kind.
Global cooling?
Actually, soot would reduce the albedo and increase global warming.
Funny it didn't melt 1000 years ago when the earth was 6 degress warmer than it is now.
I think you have missed the point, the point is the peat bogs have not always been frozen, had we been alive at the time of the last Ice Age we would be hearing an entirely different perspective. It is crazy to think that warming the planet to a pre-ice age state would be bad for humanity. It is clear that biodiversity was much greater in the pre-ice age world and I don't really understand why that is a bad thing. The world will survive ecosystems will adjust and life will thrive as it always has. Either way the warming was already occurring without us and even if we could stop it why would that be a good thing? The climate is not a static system and the end of the world types need to start accepting the fact that we are going to have to deal with a warmer world regardless of whether we eliminate all green house gas emissions or not.
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