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Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Fri 13 Dec 2019, 13:57:27
by onlooker
New data for 2019 show record-breaking levels of methane in the atmosphere within a fragile Arctic region.

 https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/09/arctic-methane-levels-reach-new-heights-data-shows/

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Fri 13 Dec 2019, 14:07:34
by rockdoc123
OK, this is just BS. The only site where methane samples are collected anywhere in the north that shows this "effect" is Barrow. Why is that ....it is all "preliminary data" as indicated by the orange color. Here is what NOAA says about the preliminary data:

Warning: Preliminary data include the this group's most up-to-date data and have not yet been subjected to rigorous quality assurance procedures. Preliminary data viewed from this site are "pre-filtered" using tools designed to identify suspect values. Filtering is performed each time a data set containing preliminary data is requested. Filtering, however, cannot identify systematic experimental errors and will not be used in place of existing data assurance procedures. Thus, there exists the potential to make available preliminary data with systematic biases. In all graphs, preliminary data are clearly identified. Users are strongly encouraged to contact Dr. Pieter Tans, Group Chief ([email protected]) before attempting to interpret preliminary data.


we have seen this countless times before. People freak out because of preliminary data that gets downgraded a few months later. Folks need to remember that methane is a well mixed gas. If you see an uptick in the Arctic that should appear everywhere in North America in 6 months time.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Tue 14 Jan 2020, 20:58:13
by Tanada

September 2019: 1870.5 ppb
September 2018: 1860.4 ppb

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Tue 14 Jan 2020, 21:00:12
by Tanada
Image

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Thu 13 Feb 2020, 22:37:28
by dohboi
"At 400 meters water depth we are already at the limit of the gas hydrate stability. If these waters warm merely by 1,3°C this hydrate lid will permanently lift, and the release will be constant." says Ferré."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 111052.htm

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Fri 14 Feb 2020, 09:54:27
by Tanada
dohboi wrote:"At 400 meters water depth we are already at the limit of the gas hydrate stability. If these waters warm merely by 1,3°C this hydrate lid will permanently lift, and the release will be constant." says Ferré."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 111052.htm


Disgusting that they do not emphasize the heat capacity of a 400 meter depth of water. The quantity of energy input needed to warm 400 meters depth of water by volume is truly a massive amount of energy. Even after we jump up the next step in the global warming sequence it will take decades if not centuries to heat that volume of water, and that is presuming that there is no water exchange with the deeper colder layers, which we know is not true.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 11:41:47
by dohboi
Five Hiroshima bombs worth of energy now every single second.

Yes, a sh!t load of energy.

90 some percent of all heating goes into the oceans.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 12:17:48
by rockdoc123
Five Hiroshima bombs worth of energy now every single second.


meaningless drivel.

Pierre Gosselin put this sort of nonsense statement in context:

So how much would 2 billion Hiroshima bombs heat the entire ocean system if it got more or less uniformly distributed? This is easy to compute. The mass of the ocean is about 1.3 x 10exp24 grams. The energy of 2 billion Hiroshima bombs is approx. 130 x 10exp21 Joules. the specific heat of water is 4.186 Joules/g°C. Thus the 2.1 billion Hiroshima bombs of heat would warm the ocean by approx.: 0.024°C


Roy Spencer also pointed out that Hurricane Harvey was outputting the energy equivalent of 1 million Hiroshima bombs per day at a minimum.

Using a hiroshima bomb analogy simply is a means for the climate panic artists to garner the attention of an uneducated public who is easily impressed by pictures of nuclear explosions. The behavior is shameful and decidely misleading.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 14:01:36
by dohboi
Warmer Water Now Reaches Deep Into The Arctic Interior

https://scitechdaily.com/warmer-water-n ... -interior/

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 16:56:42
by EnergyUnlimited
rockdoc123 wrote:So how much would 2 billion Hiroshima bombs heat the entire ocean system if it got more or less uniformly distributed? This is easy to compute. The mass of the ocean is about 1.3 x 10exp24 grams......

For your maths it is nice to remember that 1kt is an equivalent of 1Tcal with quote good accuracy (up to third decimal place).
So for example 1Mt hydrogen bomb will heat 1Pg or 10^15 grams or 1 billion tons or 1km3 of water by 1*C.

So it is really easy: 1Mt bomb will warm 1km3 of water by 1*C
Error below 0.1%.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 17:22:36
by rockdoc123
take it up with Gosselin, it was his calculation. He is an engineer so I'd make sure you are right before you attempt to correct him.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 17:47:32
by EnergyUnlimited
rockdoc123 wrote:take it up with Gosselin, it was his calculation. He is an engineer so I'd make sure you are right before you attempt to correct him.

This is maths for someone in 6th class of primary school.
You don't need engineer for it.
It is enough to remember that:
1) 1cal will heat 1g of water by 1*C
2) 1cal = 4.187 J
3) 1ton of TNT = 4184000000 J (means approximately 1Gcal), eg it will warm 1000 tons of water by 1*C.

Finding the rest is easy.
So 1Mt bomb will warm 1km3 of water by 1*C.

Error: 4184/4187=0.99928, means our error is -0.00072 or -0.072%

Pretty accurate.

Now how much water is on Earth?
According to https://www.livescience.com/29673-how-m ... earth.html we have 1.332 x 10^9 km3. In oceans is 97%, means 1.292 x 10^9 km3
So we would need this much of 1Mt bombs to warm it by 1 *C.
Hiroshima bomb was ~12kt, eg 0.012Mt.
So 2.1 billions of those would deliver 25.2 millions of megatones.
So temperature increase would be 2.52x10^7/1.292x10^9 = 0.0195*C
Oceans warmed by 0.0195*C
Close enough to your engineer's calculation.
If we assume that Hiroshima bomb had power output 15kt (not 12kt as I have assumed), then his calculations are nearly spot on (0.024375*C or ~0.0244*C).

Edit: Have checked presented calculations. They are accurate.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 17:57:29
by rockdoc123
as I said, take it up with Gosselin.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 18:05:51
by Tanada
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
rockdoc123 wrote:So how much would 2 billion Hiroshima bombs heat the entire ocean system if it got more or less uniformly distributed? This is easy to compute. The mass of the ocean is about 1.3 x 10exp24 grams......

For your maths it is nice to remember that 1kt is an equivalent of 1Tcal with quote good accuracy (up to third decimal place).
So for example 1Mt hydrogen bomb will heat 1Pg or 10^15 grams or 1 billion tons or 1km3 of water by 1*C.

So it is really easy: 1Mt bomb will warm 1km3 of water by 1*C
Error below 0.1%.


Lets compare numbers. Using your figures there are 66.666 Hiroshima bombs per megaton. Using Rocdoc's 2 Billion Hiroshima bombs and your 66.666 per cubic kilometer how do they compare? Well the ocean has around 1,300,000,000 cubic kilometers volume. So 1,300,000,000/66.666= 19,500,195 megatons to raise the ocean volume 1 degree C. Using the 2 Billion Hiroshima gives us 133,333.333 to raise the temperature 0.024C. 19,500,195/133,333.333= 146.25*0.024= 3.51C Therefore one or both these figures is off by a significant margin.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sat 15 Feb 2020, 18:26:53
by EnergyUnlimited
@Tanada,
Read my edit in previous post.
I have completed calculations and compared results.
Assuming power output of Hiroshima bomb to be 15kt they both agree with each other.
2.1 billions of Hiroshima bombs would add ~0.024*C by both approaches.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sun 16 Feb 2020, 15:54:15
by dissident
Using the total volume of the oceans is meaningless. The heat is concentrating in the near surface layer and this is shutting down the dynamic transport (via eddies) of heat into the deeper waters. The thermoclyne is getting steeper which is increasing the transport barrier. There is no rapid diffusive equilibration of heat in the oceans. Without eddy mixing, heat gradients can last many centuries (that is why we see the Krakatoa surface temperature anomaly working its way into deeper waters almost 140 years later).

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Sun 16 Feb 2020, 20:46:35
by dohboi
More on ocean heating here (though this is starting to feel a bit off topic in a methane thread 8O ):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/clim ... hange.html

Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds

In the new analysis, Mr. Hausfather and his colleagues assessed three recent studies that better accounted for the older instrument biases. The results converged at an estimate of ocean warming that was higher than that of the 2014 United Nations report and more in line with the climate models.

The waters closest to the surface have heated up the most, and that warming has accelerated over the past two decades, according to data from the lead author of the new study...


And also here, they point out how surface warming can lead to warming at depth, as the deepest waters are 'starved' of new super cold water:

https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/d ... ches-abyss

Image

And sometimes, rather counter-intuitively, deep waters can actually warm faster then the surface:

Deep Gulf of Maine has been warming twice as fast as the surface

https://bangordailynews.com/2019/05/29/ ... udy-finds/

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Wed 19 Feb 2020, 13:51:01
by dohboi
The linked reference indicates that anthropogenic fossil fuel related methane emissions are underestimated by "25 to 40 per cent of recent estimates", highlighting the risk that fuel methane emissions from fracking operation may also be severely underestimated:

Hmiel, B., Petrenko, V.V., Dyonisius, M.N. et al.

Preindustrial 14CH4 indicates greater anthropogenic fossil CH4 emissions.

Nature 578, 409–412 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1991-8

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1991-8

Abstract
Atmospheric methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas, and its mole fraction has more than doubled since the preindustrial era. Fossil fuel extraction and use are among the largest anthropogenic sources of CH4 emissions, but the precise magnitude of these contributions is a subject of debate. Carbon-14 in CH4 (14CH4) can be used to distinguish between fossil (14C-free) CH4 emissions and contemporaneous biogenic sources; however, poorly constrained direct 14CH4 emissions from nuclear reactors have complicated this approach since the middle of the 20th century. Moreover, the partitioning of total fossil CH4 emissions (presently 172 to 195 teragrams CH4 per year) between anthropogenic and natural geological sources (such as seeps and mud volcanoes) is under debate; emission inventories suggest that the latter account for about 40 to 60 teragrams CH4 per year. Geological emissions were less than 15.4 teragrams CH4 per year at the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,600 years ago, but that period is an imperfect analogue for present-day emissions owing to the large terrestrial ice sheet cover, lower sea level and extensive permafrost. Here we use preindustrial-era ice core 14CH4 measurements to show that natural geological CH4 emissions to the atmosphere were about 1.6 teragrams CH4 per year, with a maximum of 5.4 teragrams CH4 per year (95 per cent confidence limit)—an order of magnitude lower than the currently used estimates. This result indicates that anthropogenic fossil CH4 emissions are underestimated by about 38 to 58 teragrams CH4 per year, or about 25 to 40 per cent of recent estimates. Our record highlights the human impact on the atmosphere and climate, provides a firm target for inventories of the global CH4 budget, and will help to inform strategies for targeted emission reductions.


See also:

Methane emissions from fossil fuels ‘severely underestimated’

https://www.carbonbrief.org/methane-emi ... restimated

Extract:
Human-caused emissions of methane from the extraction and use of fossil fuels may have been “severely underestimated”, a new study suggests.

The research indicates that “natural” emissions of fossil methane, that seeps out of deeply-held reserves, make up a much smaller fraction of total methane emissions than previously thought.
This means that the levels of fossil methane in the atmosphere are likely being driven by the methane escaping as coal, oil and natural gas are mined, drilled and transported.

The implication is that methane emissions from fossil fuels are 25-40% higher than earlier estimates suggest, the lead researcher tells Carbon Brief.

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Thu 20 Feb 2020, 21:40:53
by Tanada

October 2019: 1876.2 ppb
October 2018: 1865.7 ppb

Re: The Methane Thread pt. 2

Unread postPosted: Thu 20 Feb 2020, 23:08:45
by asg70
This article says the methane bomb is unlikely. I wouldn't bank on it, but it's nice to know there's a less doomy model out there.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-carbon-re ... e-gas.html