How about that for a clickbaity title for a blogpost.
Although I didn’t quite go for “You won’t believe what scientists are saying
about climate change now! This will really shock you!” or "5 ways climate change will impact you. Number 4 is crazy!" I haven’t reached those
depths…
Yet…
After the depressing nature of my last piece on how Brexit is leading to uncertain future for the UK environment and energy sectors, I
really really was trying to find something more positive to write about
today. But then I ended up deciding to
go for how climate change could doom us all. Cheery.
By now, most of us have some awareness of climate change.
And yes, despite that chilly spell we had a few weeks ago, global warming is
real. Not only is it happening, but it seems to be happening quicker than
previously anticipated.
Last week, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)
informed us that June 2016 marked the 14th consecutive month of record temperatures. The temperatures over the first half of this year,
combined with record carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and early
and fast Arctic sea melting indicate that climate change is quickening.
News this week says that scientists have been taken by
surprise by the record temperatures that have occurred so far in 2016 and have
put us on track for Earth’s hottest year on record. David Carlson, director of
the WMO’s climate research programme, said on Monday:
“What concerns me most is that we
didn’t anticipate these temperature jumps. We predicted nothing like the rises
we’ve seen. Extreme events like flooding have become the new normal”
So things really seem to be hotting up where the Earth’s
climate is concerned. And there is more to be potentially concerned about. And
that is methane.
You may be familiar with methane from chemistry classes at
school when you messed around with the gas taps and occasionally used it to
fuel a Bunsen burner. Methane also made the news last week due to viral videos from Siberia of the ground wobbling due to large bubbles of gas beneath the
surface. But although all of that seemed
quite fun, where climate change is concerned, methane may not be very fun at
all…
Methane plays a significant role in warming the Earth’s
atmosphere and hundreds of millions of tons of it are currently contained beneath the Arctic
permafrost. Warmer temperatures in the Arctic Circle are permitting the methane
gas to move to the surface through soil that normally would be frozen solid. A
mass release of methane from the Arctic permafrost could therefore heighten the
greenhouse effect, leading to further warming and further methane releases. A
positive feedback loop with not very positive consequences, if you will. Russian
scientists are investigating whether some craters near Bely Island could be due
to explosions from this build-up of gas, suggesting it could be released
rapidly in large quantities.
Lastly, Siberia is experiencing massive wildfires right now,
which can cause peatlands to thaw and release carbon, from what was a sink for
millennia, to the atmosphere. And once again, more warming could lead to more
fires, more release of greenhouses gases to the atmosphere, more warming and so
on…. Russia is trying to downplay the size of the wildfires that are currently
raging. Not like them to try and cover something up.
 |
| Fires, shown by red dots, in Siberia on July 22nd 2016, with a smoke plume extending thousands of miles west. |
And it’s not just changes to the terrestrial landscape which
we should be wary of when it comes to the release of methane. The clathrate gun hypothesis states that increases in sea temperatures could trigger a sudden
release of methane from methane clathrate components in the seabed. A runaway
breakdown of methane clathrates could drastically alter ocean acidification
and, of course, the composition of the atmosphere and greenhouse effect. Times when this process may have occurred in
the past are linked to events such as the Permian-Triassic extinction event (or the "Great Dying") 252
million years ago, in which up to 95% of marine species became extinct. So
probably best to try and avoid that happening.
Given that the clathrate deposits destablilise from the
deepest part of their stability zone, which is typically hundreds of metres
below the sea bed, the process of ocean sediment warming and methane release
would take a thousand years or more. However, once started, the clathrate gun
hypothesis outlines an irreversible, runaway process. This isn’t one of those
problems we can fix easily if it begins…. But given the far off nature of the
problem no one outside of academia is probably concerned about it.
So is there anything we can do to help our understanding of
what is going on, and what may be going on in the event of even greater climate
change?
David Carlson suggests that we need to get better at
predicting “not only how frequent and intense [extreme] events will be – but
how long they will last”. This will require better global weather and climate
data, particular from areas currently lacking in detail, such as Central
Africa, Central America and the Arctic.
And if that’s not enough to convince you that something
needs to be done, Leonardo DiCaprio thinks “we are the last generation that hasa chance to stop climate change before it’s too late”. Here's to you Leo
Scaremongerng complete
Til next time
Rob
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