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Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 19 Nov 2015, 16:18:11

The exploding pits in the permafrost are back in the news again!

Dr Pavel Serov, lead author of the research which is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, said: 'Pingos are intensively discussed in the scientific community especially in the context of global climate warming scenarios. They may be the step before the methane blows out.' The researchers focused on 'two subsea pingos that were identified offshore (of) the very same area of the mysterious Yamal peninsula craters', reported the CAGE website.

The Siberian Times has led the way in drawing attention to the land craters, publishing the views of scientists on their formation and spectacular pictures of the giant holes taken during expeditions to the new phenomena. After initial doubts, scientists now believe the craters were formed by pingos erupting under pressure of methane gas released by thawing of permafrost caused by warming temperatures.

Now the Norwegian study 'shows how important methane accumulation is for the formation of subsea pingos'. These structures are 'now found strewn on the ocean floor in the Arctic shallow seas', according to the research by CAGE, part of UiT The Arctic University of Norway. 'The study area lies in the shallow South Kara Sea, at approximately 40-metre water depth.'



http://siberiantimes.com/science/casest ... as-on-land
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Thu 19 Nov 2015, 17:27:13

From 2007:
Even with evidence that pingo-like features were made of older, deeper sediment that had been pushed up from beneath the seafloor, the geologists still had to figure out what geologic process could generate enough pressure to lift seafloor sediments. The most obvious source of such pressure was methane gas, which the researchers observed bubbling out of the tops of several pingo-like features. After chemically analyzing this gas, the researchers concluded that it originated as methane hydrate, an ice-like mixture of water and methane that forms within sediments under much of the Arctic seafloor and beneath permafrost areas on land. Methane hydrate can only remain solid at low temperatures and high pressures. Such conditions exist several hundred meters below the seafloor in this part of the Arctic Ocean.

The researchers suggested that such buried hydrates might be decomposing and releasing large amounts of methane gas. This seemed possible because the seafloor in this area has been gradually warming over the last 10,000 years, after being flooded as sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. Although within a few degrees of freezing, the seawater in this region is at least 10 degrees Centigrade (20 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than permafrost-filled soil. Thus, when the ice sheets from the last ice age melted and the ocean flooded the continental shelves, it caused the seafloor sediment to become warmer.

Over thousands of years, the scientists believe, this "wave" of warming moved downward through the sediment. Eventually it reached the frozen methane hydrates, hundreds of meters down. Even a slight temperature increase could have caused some of the buried methane hydrates to decompose, releasing methane into the surrounding sediments.

Paull and Ussler's data suggest that this newly released methane migrated sideways under the seafloor, held in place by an impermeable layer of frozen soil that lies between the hydrates and the seafloor. Eventually it collected and moved toward the surface along faults or in other areas where the sediments were relatively weak.

Eventually the extruded sediment collected to form the low undersea hills visible on bathymetric charts. At the same time, areas on either side of the mounds, where much of the gas and sediment originated, slowly collapsed, forming the deeper "moats" observed by the researchers.

link

Not only warming pushing down from above, but geothermal flux from below. The Hydrate Stability Zone is a band, limited not only from above, but also below.

Arctic Submarine Hills and Methane Bubbling
Since the 1940s, scientists were puzzled by hundreds of enigmatic submarine hills, up to 40 meters (130 feet) tall and several hundred meters across, found on the floor of the Arctic Ocean.

A MBARI team of geologists, studying these formations on the Beaufort Sea Shelf, offshore of the north coast of Canada, reached the conclusion they must have been formed by methane gas sipping through seafloor sediments.

The new research is based on the chemical analysis of the gas and sediments from eight pingo-like features that appear when methane hydrate (a frozen mix of gas and seawater) breaks down under the seafloor, spitting gas that pushes deep sediments up onto the seafloor like toothpaste from a tube.

Sound waves technology revealed that the submarine hills were not made up of layers, but of a jumble consisting of sediment and small nodules of fresh-water (not salt-water) ice.

Carbon dating of the crest sediment of several hills pointed the sediment was there before the last ice age, being thousands of years older than those on the neighboring seafloor.

Many hills were surrounded by shallow "moats," where the seafloor within a one kilometer radius looked subsided.

Geologists think the sediments were lifted from the seafloor by pressure exerted by methane gas and observed sipping out of the tops of some pingo-like hills.

Methane hydrate, the source of methane, stays solid only at low temperatures and high pressures, conditions found at hundreds of meters below the seafloor in the Arctic Ocean.

The buried hydrates decomposed gradually, releasing large amounts of methane gas, as this area has been getting warmer in the last 10,000 years.

link

As the permafrost cap weakened, the pressurized methane pushed upward, like mud volcanoes.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Fri 20 Nov 2015, 23:19:28

In December 2008, at the AGU conference in San Francisco, Dr Igor Semiletov discussed exactly what we are witnessing now. He felt it was high time to warn the people what was happening, even if there was nothing we could do about it.

He was savagely attacked from all quarters, and due to his high profile positions as Director of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and lead scientist of the International Polar Year expedition, he was forced to retreat from the limelight. (I said all quarters, but actually only in the Western world, as Russian scientists expanded their research efforts.)

Here in the US, his newly wed wife, Natalia Shakova, also an Arctic scientist, took up the banner but in a more moderate tone. Hoping to get across the dangers, she herself wanting to believe there may be time to do SOMETHING if only enough people listened.

She herself became a target of the right in the US where both she and her husband were faculty members at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, aside from their research responsibilities in Russia. They were both threatened.

Now, what Semiletov was warning about in 2008, is coming to past. To all those who sought to squash the message for all those years, good job morons. If not for you, I might have stopped repeating my message, and fewer people would have been informed.

(I, like Semiletov, could see no way to avoid what was to come, but felt people had a right to know.)
Hopefully some of you got the message and took actions to extend the quality of your lives.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 21 Nov 2015, 14:09:06

Thanks, Subjectivist & Cid_Yama for the links on this subject.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Whitefang » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 07:04:45

It is S and S that brought us the bad news, so that one can be informed and prepared, we should be gratefull. A Dutch newspaper wrote a BS piece on the Yamal craters, no worry people, move on BAU.
Amazing how many scientist on the arctic are being suppressed, even get killed in accidents.
Them powers that be will not make it, that is why they are terrified and running for that door. Eager to make a prisonplanet in a hurry, petty little tyrants.
Whatever happened to vox his thing on Sao Paulo, maybe relocated by our strategic manager Tanada....hihi
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 10:05:22

Whitefang wrote:It is S and S that brought us the bad news, so that one can be informed and prepared, we should be gratefull. A Dutch newspaper wrote a BS piece on the Yamal craters, no worry people, move on BAU.
Amazing how many scientist on the arctic are being suppressed, even get killed in accidents.
Them powers that be will not make it, that is why they are terrified and running for that door. Eager to make a prisonplanet in a hurry, petty little tyrants.
Whatever happened to vox his thing on Sao Paulo, maybe relocated by our strategic manager Tanada....hihi


Vox has posted about 100 messages about Sao Paulo in the last month alone, perhaps you should actually look around the board a little more?

s-america-s-largest-city-on-verge-of-collapse-pt-4-t71906.html
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 10:36:16

That's definitely a thread worth visiting regularly.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Cog » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 10:55:53

If we knew how many of these pits had formed over the last 100 years, as opposed to what we are seeing in a limited time snapshot, that would be useful.
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subsea blowouts

Unread postby Whitefang » Mon 23 Nov 2015, 18:16:03

[quote="Tanada
Vox has posted about 100 messages about Sao Paulo in the last month alone, perhaps you should actually look around the board a little more?

s-america-s-largest-city-on-verge-of-collapse-pt-4-t71906.html

[/quote]
Oops....sloppy me, but thanks for the inside linky anyway.

http://arctic-news.blogspot.nl/

In October 2015, an area appeared in the Arctic sea ice where the temperature of the ice was a few degrees Celsius higher and where ice concentration and salinity levels were substantially lower than the surrounding ice. The image below pictures the situation on October 11, 2015.

[ click on image to enlarge ]
Could this have been an iceberg? If so, ice concentration should have been higher, rather than lower. More likely is that this is a vent hole with methane rising through cracks in the sea ice.

Malcolm Light comments: "The whole of the Arctic seabed is covered with methane hydrates and NASA satellites should have long ago defined where the major plumes were coming out. It is clearly a surface methane vent hole in the ocean ice analogous to the large methane vent holes that appeared all over northern Siberia this year. It means we have overheated the Arctic seafloor to the extent where the methane hydrates are now unstable and we could have further major releases at any time. We have already lit the fuse on a giant methane subsea permafrost bomb in the Arctic which can go off at any moment."
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby jupiters_release » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 00:41:38

Tanada wrote:
Whitefang wrote:It is S and S that brought us the bad news, so that one can be informed and prepared, we should be gratefull. A Dutch newspaper wrote a BS piece on the Yamal craters, no worry people, move on BAU.
Amazing how many scientist on the arctic are being suppressed, even get killed in accidents.
Them powers that be will not make it, that is why they are terrified and running for that door. Eager to make a prisonplanet in a hurry, petty little tyrants.
Whatever happened to vox his thing on Sao Paulo, maybe relocated by our strategic manager Tanada....hihi


Vox has posted about 100 messages about Sao Paulo in the last month alone, perhaps you should actually look around the board a little more?

s-america-s-largest-city-on-verge-of-collapse-pt-4-t71906.html


This deserves to stay in the environment forum or co-present if possible less we also move the CA drought thread to North American forum.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Synapsid » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 19:52:22

I'm still waiting for the inhabitants to emerge.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby ralfy » Sat 27 Feb 2016, 09:11:11

"Gas from thawing permafrost could add further to global warming, study says"

http://news.yahoo.com/gas-thawing-perma ... 20517.html
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 28 Feb 2016, 15:15:20

Synapsid wrote:I'm still waiting for the inhabitants to emerge.


CHUD, Mole Men, or Sarah Palin and a hollow earth Nazi on a T. rex?

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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sun 28 Feb 2016, 16:08:18

Oh, I thought there was some news on the topic, nope just more childish political posturing.

Look people methane pits are no joke, it's time to quit messing around and take these things with more gravity and less denial.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 28 Feb 2016, 16:29:47

It's not that I don't care, I just don't feel obligated to get into a pissing contest with people who compete over who can be more upset. If someone wants to soak their head in Zippo fluid and run around with their hair on fire, they should have at it, especially if that's the best plan they can come up with.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 15 Mar 2016, 11:04:32

Huge craters on the sea floor, found off Norway, suggest giant blowouts of methaneHuge craters on the sea floor, found off Norway, suggest giant blowouts of methane.

SCIENTISTS have found giant craters on the sea bed around the coast of Norway, marking spots where huge bubbles of methane aparently exploded.

The craters are up to half a mile wide and 150ft deep and appear to have been caused by gas leaking from deposits of oil and gas buried deeper in the sea floor. The gases are thought to accumulate in sea-floor sediments before bursting through the sea bed into the water above.


http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/new ... 677701.ece
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 16 Mar 2016, 07:40:21

I don't get why the reporters took this news and ran off to proclaim it solves the Bermuda Triangle question. The Barents Sea is thousands of miles from Bermuda! On top of that a rising gas column causes all the water to churn upward making ships and boats rise higher, not sink!
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby vox_mundi » Wed 16 Mar 2016, 08:20:00

Tanada wrote:I don't get why the reporters took this news and ran off to proclaim it solves the Bermuda Triangle question. The Barents Sea is thousands of miles from Bermuda! On top of that a rising gas column causes all the water to churn upward making ships and boats rise higher, not sink!

Actually, this is old news that circulated about ten years ago. A blowout of a large pingo in the North Sea sunk a large fishing trawler which was discovered 400 ft down sitting upright in the center of the resulting crater.

When a large plume of methane blows out, the resulting bubbles reduce the density of the water column. If the boat exceeds this density, it drops like an elevator.

Relative density. It's why an ice cube floats on water and sinks on gasoline.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 16 Mar 2016, 09:03:35

vox_mundi wrote:
Tanada wrote:I don't get why the reporters took this news and ran off to proclaim it solves the Bermuda Triangle question. The Barents Sea is thousands of miles from Bermuda! On top of that a rising gas column causes all the water to churn upward making ships and boats rise higher, not sink!

Actually, this is old news that circulated about ten years ago. A blowout of a large pingo in the North Sea sunk a large fishing trawler which was discovered 400 ft down sitting upright in the center of the resulting crater.

When a large plume of methane blows out, the resulting bubbles reduce the density of the water column. If the boat exceeds this density, it drops like an elevator.

Relative density. It's why an ice cube floats on water and sinks on gasoline.


Yeah that was the theory, however when they tested it by releasing large quantities of pressurized air under boats it was demonstrated that the theory does not work in real life, for the reasons I cited. It is much more likely the boat you refer to sank for some unrelated reason and ended up sitting on the Pingo by chance. Many sunken boats end up sitting on the bottom upright, they are designed and balanced to sit that way. Even the Titanic that split in half ended up with both halves sitting mostly upright.
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Re: Huge pits forming in Arctic permafrost

Unread postby vox_mundi » Wed 16 Mar 2016, 11:00:18

Tanada wrote:
vox_mundi wrote:
Tanada wrote:I don't get why the reporters took this news and ran off to proclaim it solves the Bermuda Triangle question. The Barents Sea is thousands of miles from Bermuda! On top of that a rising gas column causes all the water to churn upward making ships and boats rise higher, not sink!

Actually, this is old news that circulated about ten years ago. A blowout of a large pingo in the North Sea sunk a large fishing trawler which was discovered 400 ft down sitting upright in the center of the resulting crater.

When a large plume of methane blows out, the resulting bubbles reduce the density of the water column. If the boat exceeds this density, it drops like an elevator.

Relative density. It's why an ice cube floats on water and sinks on gasoline.


Yeah that was the theory, however when they tested it by releasing large quantities of pressurized air under boats it was demonstrated that the theory does not work in real life, ...

Do you have a link to this study?

Thought experiment:

Take a cubic meter of water (density = 1,000 kg/m³)

Replace half the volume with methane (density = 0.656 kg/m³)

Then each cubic meter of the mixture has a density of 500.3 kg/m³

Say this change in density occurs over a quarter mile of sea surface

If a ship normally displaces 100,000 cubic meters in water the ship would have to displace twice the volume (200,000 cubic meters) to remain afloat. If water over tops it will become an instant submarine.

Image
Riding empty

Image
Riding full

Will it float? Maybe empty; but full, I don't think so.
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