Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
... "This study was novel because we used new methods to directly track the soil carbon losses, and they were much higher than we previously thought," Schuur said. "This suggests that not only is carbon being lost through greenhouse gases directly to the atmosphere but also dissolved in waters that flow through the soil and likely carried carbon into streams, leaves and rivers."
... According to the study, 5 to 15 percent of the soil carbon held in the permafrost could be released into the atmosphere by the end of the century, using the original scenario. The modeling exercise the research team used to compare agreed with the observations but suggests that the loss rate could be twofold or more higher. (I.e. >10-30%)
César Plaza et al. Direct observation of permafrost degradation and rapid soil carbon loss in tundra, Nature Geoscience (2019)
dohboi wrote:New (to me) link to methane mapping site:
Methane forecasts
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/charts ... h4_surface
Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas jumped again last year, continuing a surge in the past few years that researchers still cannot fully explain.
Atmospheric concentrations of methane climbed by 10.77 parts per billion in 2018, the second highest annual increase in the past two decades, according to provisional data released recently by US agency NOAA.
As, indicated by the last linked article, industry is under reporting their amounts of methane by as much as a factor of 100. Maybe this has something to do with consensus climate scientists uncertainty on anthropogenic emission rates
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Studies published in 2016 and 2018 led to the estimate of methane's warming potential being revised upwards by 15%, meaning methane is now considered to be 32 times more efficient at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO₂, on a per-molecule basis over a 100-year time span.
Considering this new evidence, we calculate that greenhouse gas concentrations at Cape Grim crossed the 500ppm CO₂-e threshold in July 2018.
This is higher than the official estimate based on the previous formulation for calculating CO₂-e, which remains in widespread use. For instance, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is reporting 2018 CO₂-e as 496ppm
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Russian scientists find 'most powerful' ever methane seep in Arctic Ocean
Russian scientists in the Arctic Ocean said they have discovered the most powerful methane gas fountain ever recorded, highlighting the danger of this greenhouse gas accelerating climate change or causing an oil or gas spill as it erupts from thawing permafrost.
A research expedition from the Tomsk polytechnic university found the seep, as methane leaks are known, east of Bennett Island in the East Siberian Sea, where its violent bubbles seemed to make the water “boil” over an area of 50 square feet.
The concentration of methane in the air there was up to 16 parts per million, more than nine times higher than the atmospheric average.
“This is the most powerful seep I have ever been able to observe,” lead scientist Igor Semiletov, who has participated in 45 Arctic expeditions, said in a statement this week. “No one has ever recorded anything similar.”
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Whitefang wrote:Does Copernicus have a paywall?
Methane tracker site is gone?
Pauly B. should have links to recent data for free as should be, I do have a bias
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The CH4 concentration values for August are available now:
August 2019: 1863.6 ppb
August 2018: 1851.9 ppb
Last updated: December 05, 2019
The annual increase (11.7 ppb) is significantly above from that of the last months. ...
I took the time and checked the average August annual methane increase. Apart from 1998 (the super El Niño year) there has never been such an increase since 1990.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50708544Scientists think they can now explain at least part of the recent growth in methane (CH4) levels in the atmosphere.
Researchers, led from Edinburgh University, UK, say their studies point to a big jump in emissions coming from just the wetlands of South Sudan.
Satellite data indicates the region received a large surge of water from East African lakes, including Victoria.
This would have boosted CH4 from the wetlands, accounting for a significant part of the rise in global methane.
Emissions of methane (CH4) from tropical ecosystems, and how they respond to changes in climate, represent one of the biggest uncertainties associated with the global CH4 budget. Historically, this has been due to the dearth of pan-tropical in situ measurements, which is particularly acute in Africa. By virtue of their superior spatial coverage, satellite observations of atmospheric CH4 columns can help to narrow down some of the uncertainties in the tropical CH4 emission budget. We use proxy column retrievals of atmospheric CH4 (XCH4) from the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and the nested version of the GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemistry and transport model (0.5 ∘ ×0.625 ∘ 0.5∘×0.625∘) to infer emissions from tropical Africa between 2010 and 2016. Proxy retrievals of XCH4 are less sensitive to scattering due to clouds and aerosol than full physics retrievals, but the method assumes that the global distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) is known. We explore the sensitivity of inferred a posteriori emissions to this source of systematic error by using two different XCH4 data products that are determined using different model CO2 fields. We infer monthly emissions from GOSAT XCH4 data using a hierarchical Bayesian framework, allowing us to report seasonal cycles and trends in annual mean values. We find mean tropical African emissions between 2010 and 2016 range from 76 (74–78) to 80 (78–82) Tg yr−1, depending on the proxy XCH4 data used, with larger differences in Northern Hemisphere Africa than Southern Hemisphere Africa. We find a robust positive linear trend in tropical African CH4 emissions for our 7-year study period, with values of 1.5 (1.1–1.9) Tg yr−1 or 2.1 (1.7–2.5) Tg yr−1, depending on the CO2 data product used in the proxy retrieval. This linear emissions trend accounts for around a third of the global emissions growth rate during this period. A substantial portion of this increase is due to a short-term increase in emissions of 3 Tg yr−1 between 2011 and 2015 from the Sudd in South Sudan.
Using satellite land surface temperature anomalies and altimetry data, we find this increase in CH4 emissions is consistent with an increase in wetland extent due to increased inflow from the White Nile, although the data indicate that the Sudd was anomalously dry at the start of our inversion period. We find a strong seasonality in emissions across Northern Hemisphere Africa, with the timing of the seasonal emissions peak coincident with the seasonal peak in ground water storage.
In contrast, we find that a posteriori CH4 emissions from the wetland area of the Congo Basin are approximately constant throughout the year, consistent with less temporal variability in wetland extent, and significantly smaller than a priori estimates.
Return to Environment, Weather & Climate
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 25 guests