A THREAD on Arctic Seabed Permafrost.
What are the consequences of an ice-free Arctic for the first time in over 100,000 years?
'Possibly one of the most severe threats is the that the shallow waters off the Arctic coast, especially the Siberian coast, are very wide...
continental shelves, only about 50 to 100 meters of water. That water could warm up during the summer months because the area is ice-free now already, and this will give you positive temperatures on the seabed which will start to thaw out the seabed permafrost which has been
sitting there frozen since the last Ice Age. This has never happened before because the sea ice never retreated very much in the summer and the water temperature could not rise above zero because of the ice cover… The permafrost is acting as a cap for a very large amount of
methane (CH4), which is sitting in the sediments underneath in the form of methane hydrates. You release the pressure by removing that permafrost and methane comes out as huge bubble plumes. It’s already happening; it’s been detected by scientists all over the Russian Arctic
and most recently by a Swedish expedition and by various U.S./Russian expeditions. Each time they go there’s more and more bubbles coming out, and the fear is that there’ll be a general release of methane trapped under those sediments, which could cause a very rapid rise in
the rate of sea level. We calculated it could give you 0.6 C warming of the planet in five years. That’s a big boost because methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas'.
~ Peter Wadhams.
Read the whole amazing 2016 article by @Robert_Hunziker here:
counterpunch.org/2016/06/17/epi…