Methane Outbreak Alert!

Methane gas is released into the atmosphere from both natural and human sources. Natural sources include grazing animals, volcanic eruptions, and some land plants. Bogs and mires naturally release methane gas as their bacterial communities breakdown organic material. Methane is also released during earthquakes when shifts in plate tectonics disrupt the ocean floor. Domestic hoofed-mammals like cows and sheep that are amongst the planet's major emitters of methane.

2011 56 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2010 69 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2009 68 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2008 78 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2007 72 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2006 76 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2005 73 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2004 71 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2003 64 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2002 68 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2001 65 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
2000 67 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1999 66 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1998 56 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1997 52 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1996 59 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1995 62 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1994 58 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1993 58 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1992 57 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1991 64 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1990 55 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1989 54 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1988 63 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions
1987 64 volcanoes that had confirmed eruptions

Methane differs from carbon dioxide is that it only persists in the atmosphere for roughly 10 years after it is released, whereas carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for about 100 years.

Is it any real question as to why there is a spike in Methane? It's the volcanoes if you haven't a clue....

Also, I believe the term "ice age" to be a bit of a misnomer. The planet always has portions covered in ice. What happens is that these ice sheets move based on what the ocean currents are doing at the time. Sometimes they move south from the Arctic and then they recede again, but they are always there. Maybe the arctic shelf disappears this time, but the antarctic is still there and the arctic will be back.

reply to post by sirric


And the same goes for the Co2. Rock weathering and volcanism accounts for more than 90% of all Co2 emissions on this planet. As others have said already, man's impact in greenhouse gases is negligible. We just gotta make sure we take care of our oceans. That is where we can deal major damage.

reply to post by jiggerj


It's called weather!?

Can you imagine if Africa was completely on fire??? really you think that was a possibility??


Yeah ok!

reply to post by sirric


Methane is released via volcanic eruptions? Not sure about that. Can you provide a link please.Thanks in advance.

reply to post by JakiusFogg


You DONT think that's possible? Haha
There have been times when this entire PLANET was on fire!

reply to post by jimmyx

he showed statistics that the amount of carbon dioxide are off the charts in our lifetime, in comparision to ice core samples from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

That data is incomplete when you take into account that the earth is 4 billion years old, it is just a drop in the bucket. The fact is that co2 levels have been higher in our past. The earth has been warmer in our past. Long before man was around.

Natural Cycle, it has happen in the past, and will happen in the future long after man is gone.

Questions for you.

Have or haven't there been many iceages?

Are we coming out of the last iceage or going into one?

What happens to temps, when you exit a iceage ?

Originally posted by JakiusFogg
reply to post by jiggerj

 

It's called weather!?

Can you imagine if Africa was completely on fire??? really you think that was a possibility??


Yeah ok!

I'm not even sure this is saying what I think it's saying, but I was looking for the term whole continents when related to fire.

From The Long Burn

But they could not break into shade-laden woods empty of dry tinder or hold the frontier against blurred seasons and chronic wetness. The firestick could nudge vast ecosystems, as it did much of Africa, or even wrench whole continents, as it apparently did Australia, but only if it had a suitably arranged fulcrum of tinder.

im sorry i didnt mean to fart

reply to post by logicalview


This is just 1 volcano area ....

Methane emission from mud volcanoes in eastern Azerbaijan

Methane (CH4) flux to the atmosphere was measured from gas vents and, for the first time, from soil microseepage at four quiescent mud volcanoes and one “everlasting fire” in eastern Azerbaijan. Mud volcanoes show different activity of venting craters, gryphons, and bubbling pools, with CH4 fluxes ranging from less than one to hundreds of tons per year. Microseepage CH4 flux is generally on the order of hundreds of milligrams per square meter per day, even far away from the active centers. The CH4 flux near the everlasting fires (on the order of 105 mg·m−2·d−1) represents the highest natural CH4 emission from soil ever measured. The specific CH4 flux to the atmosphere, between 102 and 103 t·km−2·yr−1, was similar to specific flux from other mud volcanoes in Europe. At least 1400 tons of CH4 per year are released from the investigated areas. It is conservatively estimated that all onshore mud volcanoes of Azerbaijan, during quiescent activity, may still emit ∼0.3–0.9 × 106 t of CH4 per year into the atmosphere. The new data fill a significant gap in the worldwide data set and confirm the importance of geologic sources of greenhouse CH4, although they are not yet considered in the climate-study budgets of atmospheric CH4 sources and sinks.

From another source:

Methane — which can be created naturally by volcanic eruptions or produced by primitive life — thus may be a missing piece of the puzzle to finding out if organic remnants might once have sustained a primordial Mars. The last period of active volcanism on Mars is well before the last 300 years that methane can survive in the martian atmosphere of today. University of Buffalo volcanologist, Tracy Gregg, told Astrobiology Magazine, “the youngest surficial activity discovered to date (and it’s probably 1 million years old, which would be considered quite young, and possibly “active” on Mars) is in a region that contains no large volcanic structures of any kind.” Mars’ gigantic volcano Mons Olympus was active until 100 million years ago. Read more: www.universetoday.com...

during a period called the Holocene Climate Optimum, there was more open water and far less ice than today - probably less than 50% of the minimum Arctic sea ice recorded in 2007. Problem is there was no one to take methane leak readings.

solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov...

"Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715.... This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the "Little Ice Age" when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past."

www.scienceagogo.com...

28 Jun 1998 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several ground-based instruments show that temperatures on Neptune's largest moon have increased dramatically since the Voyager space probe in 1989. So much so, in fact, that Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen is turning into gas, making its thin atmosphere denser by the day.

Elliot and colleagues from the Lowell Observatory and Williams College reported their findings in the June 25 issue of Nature. Triton's 5 percent increase in temperature from about -392 to -389 degrees F would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of some 22 degrees F in just nine years.

All the reports I have read say the Jovian system is also warming...The only reason I point this out is to show our sun's radiance and it's position in the galactic plain coupled with the earths spin axis (wobble every 26,000 years) can not be ruled out when discussing climate change.

www.theregister.co.uk...
QUOTE:
Scientists returning from a seaborne expedition to the Arctic say that the ongoing panic in some quarters regarding runaway emissions of methane from the chilly polar seas - and associated imminent global-warming disaster - appears to be unjustified.

For those unacquainted with this particular panic, the idea is that rising Arctic sea temperatures caused by humans in recent times are causing methane locked up as hydrates on the chilly seabed to be emitted into the atmosphere as gas – as methane hydrates are only stable at very low temperatures and high pressures. Methane, as any fule kno, is a hugely more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, so this would cause more warming which would then release more methane from the seabed until once again planet Earth becomes a baking lifeless hell. As ever with scenarios leading to baking lifeless hell, the hippies* at Greenpeace and similar activists are very keen on this idea. Various scientists have detected methane emissions from Arctic waters by various means, too. END QUOTE:

Please do not think I am arguing with your concern over the methane gas; in truth I am not and think it puzzling to say the least. I could have posted many articles claiming methane will be the death of us but I could have posted others saying with a 50% increase of the ice shelf over the last 5000 years there was more methane leaking in the past.
www.geomar.de...
QUOTE:
In fact, what the researchers
found in the area offers a much
more differentiated picture.
Above all the fear that the gas emanation is a consequence
of the current rising sea
temperature does not seem to apply. At least some of the gas outlets have been active for
longer. Carbonate deposits, which form when microorganisms convert the escaping
methane, were found on the
vents. “At numerous emergences we found deposits that
might already be hundreds of years old. This
estimation is indeed only based on the size
of the samples and empirical values as to how fast such deposits grow. On any account,
the methane sources must be older” says Professor Berndt. The exact age of the
carbonates will be determined from samples in GEOMAR’s laboratories. END QUOTE:

This is a much shorter version of what I tried to post earlier when the internet crashed and I lost almost 3 hours of research!! Pissed me off to say the least! Anyway I figure the OP will read the info posted because he actually cares where those who think all the worlds ills are caused by mankind will not take the time to consider all the possibilities.

I am so glad more and more people are becoming aware of the increase, although I do think its mostly natural and something the Earth has always done to rectify herself.

From my point of view and from what I have gathered thus far I lean toward the Sun and where it's at in the Solar System as to why we are experiencing these drastic changes.

For further explanation see my signature.

Originally posted by Donkey_Dean
The Permian–Triassic extinction event which is the greatest extinction event we know of is said to have been caused by methane clathrate release. Scary stuff man, scary!

A little research on the Permian–Triassic extinction event reveals that a number of factors came together including vulcanism and asteroid impacts. The extinctions came in waves over thousands of years to over one million years to reach the peak extinction levels of 95% of all species.

If we are heading into a similar ELE, it seems the human race will have plenty of time to deal with it. The mass die offs and red tides are probably the precursors to the first extinction wave, but unless some big natural disasters combine together soon, I doubt any of us will long enough to see that first wave of widespread extinctions.

Originally posted by rockymcgilicutty
reply to post by jimmyx

 

he showed statistics that the amount of carbon dioxide are off the charts in our lifetime, in comparision to ice core samples from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

That data is incomplete when you take into account that the earth is 4 billion years old, it is just a drop in the bucket. The fact is that co2 levels have been higher in our past. The earth has been warmer in our past. Long before man was around.

Natural Cycle, it has happen in the past, and will happen in the future long after man is gone.

Questions for you.

Have or haven't there been many iceages?

Are we coming out of the last iceage or going into one?

What happens to temps, when you exit a iceage ?

Actually we are in Ice age currently, or more accurately, interglacial era. Basically, warm period of ice age, when there is glaciers, but not the whole planet is frozen. This ice age started 2,6 million years ago.

reply to post by sirric


Thanks for the link. I never considered 'mud' volcanoes.

We already have answers. Chemtrails to reflect solar radiation back into space; neglecting the toxic effects of aluminum on humans and plants. We also have HAARP to blast holes in the ozone layer to allow heat to escape into space. A weakening magnetic field, depleting ozone layer and methane releases, and massive fraud by the bankers guarantees that we are all screwed.

reply to post by 727Sky


Not all planets or bodies in our solar system are warming and the sun has been in a relatively cooler cycle since the 1950's, solar output does not match the increase in temperature. Given that the sun is the primary driver for climate do you think scientists just decided to not look at the sun to explain warming? It's been looked at, it's not to blame for our current warming period.

reply to post by Kali74


That doesn't mean that the process of atmospheric methane distribution is fully understood or that all sources are accounted for.

The balance between sources and sinks is not yet fully understood. The IPCC Working Group I stated in chapter 2 of the Fourth Assessment Report that there are "large uncertainties in the current bottom-up estimates of components of the global source", and the balance between sources and sinks is not yet well known. The most important sink in the methane cycle is reaction with the hydroxyl radical, which is produced photochemically in the atmosphere.

Production of this radical is not fully understood and has a large effect on atmospheric concentrations. This uncertainty is exemplified by observations that have shown between the year 2000 and 2006 increases in atmospheric concentration of methane ceased without reduction in anthropogenic sources, showing that methane accounting does not accurately predict methane observations.

wiki

The basic premise was, and still is to some extent, that methane content in the atmosphere was stable (at a fixed amount) for a given time period before the industrialisation. It will lead inevitably to misinterpretations of ice core and varve proxies, when the sources for atmospheric methane are only attributed to human activity or decay of biological organisms, or termites. Paleoclimatology is slowly acknowledging this fact. It's a step by step process, the next one is good example.

Sapart and her colleagues chemically analyzed the methane in microscopic air bubbles trapped in each ice layer. They wanted to know if warmer periods over the past two millennia increased gas levels, possibly by spur- ring bacteria to break down organics in wetlands. The goal was to learn more about how future warm spells might boost atmospheric methane and accelerate climate change.

The researchers did find that methane concentrations went up—but not in step with warm periods. “The changes we observed must have been coming from something else."

“The ice core data show that as far back as the time of the Roman Empire, human [activities] emitted enough methane gas to have had an impact on the methane signature of the entire atmosphere,” Sapart says.

Although such emissions weren’t enough to alter the climate, she says, the discovery that humans already were altering the atmosphere on a global scale was “tremendously surprising.”

The discovery will compel scientists to rethink predictions about how future methane emissions will affect climate. “It used to be that before 1750, everything was considered ‘natural,’” Sapart says, “so the base line needs to be reconsidered, and we need to look farther back in time to see how much methane there was before humans got involved.”


Read more: www.smithsonianmag.com...

This is an eyewitness account from a german geophysicist (Otto Stutzer) of natural gas eruptions he observed in the early 20th century. There are many examples in corresponding literature, including animal mass die-offs, mud volcanos, major gas eruptions etc.

Research in the field is relatively recent, but the few studies available can already help to provide estimates for how much natural sources contribute to the overall budget, and to get a much better understanding of past climate conditions.

"Atmospheric analyses have always indicated that the atmosphere contains more hydrocarbons than those which would be emitted by known sources – especially for fossil methane which was considered due only to anthropogenic activity, i.e. the oil industry," said Etiope. "A further source was required to balance the models. Our studies show that these unknown source are just the Earth’s degassing."

Methane & Climate

GLOGOS

Propane & Ethane

Interesting thread and as you know there is a danger of mass extinction at the base of the food chain in the sea, but thank goodness for a moment there I read in fear and realised no I am not in a crowded elevator.

Seriously though a very important thread and we may be past the point of no return as far as sub glacial methane deposits are concerned and sub oceanic pressure crystallised methane is also on the border line of being heated to a gaseous state that would damage the aquatic environment and add to further global greenhouse gas level's.