A NASA science team has observed “amazing and potentially troubling” levels of methane and CO2 from the rapidly warming Arctic. Given the staggering amount of carbon trapped in the permafrost — and the fact that methane is a very potent heat-trapping gas — the space agency is now asking: “Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?”

“Permafrost zones occupy nearly a quarter of the exposed land area of the Northern Hemisphere. NASA’s Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) is probing deep into the frozen lands above the Arctic Circle in Alaska to measure emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost — signals that may hold a key to Earth’s climate future.” Credit: UNEP

We’ve known for a while that “permafrost” was a misnomer (see “Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s“). The defrosting permamelt will likely add up to 1.5°F to total global warming by 2100.

Two studies from February provide more evidence the process may happen even faster than we thought:

• 500,000-Year History of Permafrost Reveals Further Warming of 1.5°C Would ‘Thaw Significant Regions’
• “Surface exposure to sunlight stimulates CO₂ release from permafrost soil carbon in the Arctic”

Now we are getting some of the first detailed observations of carbon emissions from the thawing permafrost thanks to the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE), “a five-year NASA-led field campaign studying how climate change is affecting the Arctic’s carbon cycle.”

Flying in a specially instrumented C-23 Sherpa aircraft only 500 feet above the ground, CARVE scientists “measure interesting exchanges of carbon taking place between Earth’s surface and atmosphere,” something most other airborne permafrost measurement missions can’t do. The goal:

Ultimately, the scientists hope their observations will indicate whether an irreversible permafrost tipping point may be near at hand. While scientists don’t yet believe the Arctic has reached that tipping point, no one knows for sure.

NASA’s news release is one of the best I’ve ever seen from any source. I’ll quote it at length since its factoids and findings are so citable.

Let’s start with just how fast the permafrost has been heating up. CARVE principal investigator Charles Miller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains:
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The biggest story of our time is the collapse of Arctic sea ice and its impact on our extreme weather (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“).

“Death spiral” is the right visual metaphor, as the latest monthly update of sea ice volume by creative tech guru Andy Lee Robinson shows:

If recent volume trends continue, many experts say we will see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” within a decade.

Recent research finds that may well usher in a permanent change toward extreme, prolonged weather events “such as drought, flooding, cold spells and heat waves.”

For more the link between the death spiral and weather whiplash, here’s Peter Sinclair’s latest video, featuring interviews with Dr. Jeff Masters and Dr. Jennifer Francis:

Related Posts:

• NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather
• NOAA: Climate Change Driving Arctic Into A ‘New State’ With Rapid Ice Loss And Record Permafrost Warming

Sean Churchfield, Shell Operation Manager for Alaska, answers questions during a US Coast Guard hearing. (Credit: Bob Hallinen, Anchorage Daily News)

The main reason an offshore oil rig ran aground off the coast of Alaska late last year was because oil company Royal Dutch Shell was trying to depart state waters to avoid paying millions in taxes.

Sean Churchfield, operations manager for Royal Dutch Shell in Alaska, testified to the Coast Guard over the weekend that the Kulluk, an Arctic offshore drilling rig, left Dutch Harbor in December “driven by the economic factors.” When the Coast Guard’s legal advisor Lt. Cmdr. Brian McNamara asked why leaving by the end of the year was such a concern, Churchfield said:

“The end of the year to my understanding was when the tax liability potentially would have become effective.”

The cost of maintaining the rig in Dutch Harbor was another factor, but the tax liability was larger, according to Churchfield. The Kulluk is a 28,000 ton oil drilling ship that ran aground off the shore of Sitkalidak Island, Alaska due to an extremely strong winter storm in the waning hours of 2012. The Coast Guard took part in a joint operation to evacuate all crewmembers. Currently, the Kulluk and its counterpart the Noble Discoverer are in Asia for repairs.

Soon after the Kulluk left Dutch Harbor, an email from Shell to the Dutch Harbor Fisherman revealed that tax issues did play into the decision to leave when it did. During a press conference the day after the accident, Churchfield said, “The reason we moved it down (to the Seattle-area) was to get off-season repairs done.” Soon after, a Shell spokesman told the Alaska Dispatch that the Kulluk left because of a two-week window in which the weather looked safe through the Gulf of Alaska.

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Climate change is slamming the Arctic more severely than any other place on Earth. Yet tomorrow’s Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Kiruna, Sweden is not expected to produce substantial action to address it.

In short, glaciers are moving faster than efforts to slow them. Representatives from the eight Arctic nations, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, will gather to sign an oil spill preparedness and response agreement and vote on permanent observer status for other major nations with Arctic interests, including China and the EU. While the agenda includes presentations on ocean acidification and resilience, meaningful commitments to slow the devastating effects of climate change are unlikely.

Acknowledging the fact that climate change is occurring in the Arctic at double the rate of the rest of the planet, Gustaf Lind, Sweden’s top Arctic official, stated in a pre-meeting press conference that discussions regarding reductions in the CO2 emissions that fuel global warming should be reserved for the United Nations process.

However, CO2 reductions are not the only means of curbing climate change, and smaller forums like the Arctic Council offer a rare opportunity to reach agreements without needing 190 countries on board. The last ministerial meeting in 2011 highlighted the role of black carbon in climate change. Black carbon — essentially soot from inefficient combustion, such as natural gas flaring, wood stoves and the controlled burning of agricultural waste — is particularly dangerous in the Arctic, where it darkens ice surfaces and accelerates melting.

Black carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are potent greenhouse gases that play a major role in driving global warming. However, new research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that reducing SCLPs in conjunction with curbing carbon pollution could have a very powerful effect on mitigating climate change. Though the Council’s Task Force on SLCPs has produced a significant body of research and recommendations, no commitments from Arctic Council members to curb their emissions were made in 2011 and two years later, SLCPs are on the agenda once again but without a plan to reduce their destructive presence.

Unfortunately, time is not on the Council’s side. Last year was a very grim one for the Arctic, as record-low sea ice extent, record ice sheet surface melting in Greenland, record-high permafrost temperature, and record-low snow extent were all recorded.

Secretary Kerry has underscored the urgency of climate change in recent months, today offering “regret” that the US hasn’t done more to address the problem. A new Arctic management plan released by the White House on Friday, however, was little more than a restatement of the vague goals for the region drafted at the end of the Bush presidency. In addition to advocating responsible stewardship of the Arctic ecosystem, the plan called for development of offshore oil and gas resources as part of the administration’s “all of the above” strategy.

Offshore drilling in the Arctic comes with an enormous risk and cost due to the lack of infrastructure, oil spill response technology, baseline scientific knowledge, and preparedness to operate in the harsh and unpredictable conditions. Ironically, the dramatic changes experienced throughout the Arctic — many of which are the result of man-made climate change — are unlocking massive fossil-fuel reserves which, when burned, would only accelerate the destructive cycle of unchecked emissions and warming. Slowing the devastating steamroll of climate change requires slashing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, not opening up vast new sources of carbon.

At a time when climate change should receive top billing at the Arctic Council ministerial, allowing another meeting to pass without a concerted effort to deal directly with the pollutants that are driving the dramatic changes in the Arctic is a serious missed opportunity.

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress. Rebecca Lefton, Senior Policy Analyst, contributed to this post.

We have pushed atmospheric CO2 levels to 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human existence.

At the same time, a truly remarkably set of paleoclimate data shows the climate is much more sensitive to CO2 than we thought. And that means returning as quickly as possible back to 350 ppm is a vastly more rational course of action for a non-suicidal civilization, than, say continuing our unrestrained march toward 600 ppm, then 800, and then 1000.

NOAA reported Friday that the daily mean concentration of CO2 in the air around Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million this week:

At the same time, a major new Science study of paleoclimate temperatures — based on ”the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic” – revealed what happened the last time we had similar CO2 levels:

“One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the Pliocene [~ 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago] when others have suggested atmospheric CO2 was very much like levels we see today. This could tell us where we are going in the near future. In other words, the Earth system response to small changes in carbon dioxide is bigger than suggested by earlier models,” the authors state.

Yes, contrary to one or two (misreported) models suggesting a climate sensitivity on the low side, this study joins the myriad analyses of data that find it is likely to prove on the high side. For instance, recent observations of relative humidity in the tropics and subtropics found that “Future warming likely to be on high side of climate projections,” according to a November paper in Science.

How sensitive is the climate to increases in CO2, according to this “absolutely new knowledge” of paleoclimate temperatures?

Another significant finding to emerge from this first continuous, high-resolution record of the Middle Pliocene is documentation of sustained warmth with summer temperatures of about 59 to 61 degrees F [15 to 16 degrees C], about 8 degrees C [14 F] warmer than today.

This period of Arctic warmth “coincides, in part with a long interval of 1.2 million years when the West Antarctic Ice sheet did not exist.” Indeed, sea levels during the mid-Pliocine were about 25 m [82 feet] higher than today!

It is worth noting that a 2009 analysis in Science found that when CO2 levels were this high 15 to 20 million years ago, it was 5° to 10°F warmer globally and seas were also 75 to 120 feet higher.

The risks of failing to sharply curtail carbon pollution are enormous if the climate sensitivity is on the low side (see “Memo To Media: ‘Climate Sensitivity’ Is NOT The Same As Projected Future Warming, World Faces 10°F Rise“). But the risks of inaction are beyond incalculable if climate sensitivity is in the middle end of the range, let alone the high end suggested by the paleoclimate data:

Science (1/11) study — On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter: Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models”

As I explained in Nature online back in 2008 (here), once you factor in carbon-cycle feedbacks, even the uber-cautious Fourth Assessment report (AR4) of the IPCC makes clear we are headed toward 1000 ppm (the A1FI scenario). That conclusion has been supported by just about every major independent analysis, including a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (see Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires “Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation“).

This new paper is just the latest to suggest the Arctic will warm much faster than the models have suggested. For instance, back in 2006, scientists analyzed deep marine sediments to understand the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum, a brief period some 55 million years ago of “widespread, extreme climatic warming that was associated with massive atmospheric greenhouse gas input.” That Nature study (subs. req’d) found Arctic temperatures almost beyond imagination–above 23°C (74°F)–temperatures more than 18°F warmer than climate models had predicted when applied to this period. The three dozen authors conclude that existing climate models are missing crucial feedbacks that can significantly amplify polar warming.

Clearly our climate models don’t do a good job of explaining what’s happening in the Arctic right now:

Arctic sea ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected (actual observations in red). The reason is most likely unmodeled amplifying feedbacks. The image (from Climate Crocks via Arctic Sea Ice Blog) comes from a 2007 GRL research paper by Stroeve et al.

And this underestimation of polar amplification in turn leads the authors of the new study — and many other scientists — to conclude that the climate’s overall sensitivity is on the high side. As the UK Guardian reports:

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The Arctic is the fastest changing place on earth. The most obvious and important change is the staggering loss of sea ice (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“).

In addition, “the Arctic marine waters are experiencing widespread and rapid ocean acidification,” a new study finds. This first-ever Arctic Ocean Acidification Assessment, commissioned by the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), explains that the “primary driver of ocean acidification is uptake of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere by human activities.”

We knew from a 2010 Nature Geoscience study that the oceans are now acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. We are risking a marine biological meltdown “by end of century” as a 2010 Geological Society study put it.

As the lead author of a 2012 study on acidification in Science explained, “if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon.”

Here is a video from AMAP on Arctic Ocean acidification:

The Key Findings of the AMAP study are here.

Related Posts:

• Bad Acid Trip: USGS Study Finds Humans Are Acidifying ‘The Air, Oceans, Freshwaters And Soils’
• The Great Oyster Crash and Why Ocean Acidification Is “A Ticking Time Bomb” for Both Marine Life and Humanity

The Earth’s atmosphere will soon contain more than 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide for the first time in human history. In related news, another large oil company made billions of dollars selling the world more fossil fuels.

Royal Dutch Shell pulled in nearly $8 billion in profits for the first quarter of this year, a 3.5 percent jump from the same three months last year. The corporation is Europe’s largest oil and gas company. The higher profits were made possible, per the BBC, from “strong refining and trading performances” and higher natural gas prices in the United States. Shell is looking to double its share in the global gas business:

Shell now has about 7 percent of the world L.N.G. business, with ambitions to more than double that share through new projects and acquisitions. Last year, L.N.G. and related businesses earned Shell $9.4 billion of its $25.1 billion in profit.

CEO Peter Voser, who started as CEO in 2004, announced his retirement next year, and warned the industry of “significant” price volatility due to global instability. Here are some key facts on Shell from this quarter:

• Shell raked in $7.95 billion in profits in Q1. Fox News focused on the fact that “net profits” were down from $8.74 billion to $8.18 billion from the first quarter of last year.
• Bloomberg’s survey of 11 analysts predicted Shell would make just $6.4 billion.
• Oil and gas production was up 2 percent from first quarter 2012, to 3.6 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
• The company has $17.6 billion in cash-on-hand.
• Shell received a $200 million annual tax break in 2011.
• Dividends increased 5 percent from first quarter 2012, while Shell spent half a billion dollars to buy back 16.1 million shares.
• Outgoing CEO Voser’s pay package, when combined with a significant bonus from last year, totaled $6.7 million. Bonus stock shares add millions to the total package.
• Shell spent over $2 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2013. For context, Shell was the top lobbying spender of the oil and gas industry last year, totaling $14.4 million.

What does Shell have to look forward to this year? It will partner with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to develop the Bab gas field, which contains “sour gas, a poisonous and foul smelling product.” One thing it will not be doing is drilling in the Arctic Ocean. After spending about $5 billion on preparing to drill in such risky conditions, Shell suspended operations last year and announced it would not attempt to drill again in 2013. Other oil companies are starting to realize Arctic offshore drilling is a bad idea as well.

Many experts now say that if recent volume trends continue we will see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” within a decade.

Creative tech guru Andy Lee Robinson shows why in a wondrous new video — set to music he wrote and played:

Let’s help this video go viral!

Related Posts:

• CryoSat-2 Confirms Arctic Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed
• How Arctic Death Spiral Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events ‘Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves’
• NOAA:Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather

We’ve written extensively about how how arctic ice loss is driving extreme weather.

Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences has been at the forefront of this research. She appears in many videos explaining the connection between climate change and extreme weather (see recent 40 minute video here).

Here’s a short version aimed at a very general audience:

Related Posts:

• Arctic Warming Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events ‘Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves’
• NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather
• How Arctic Ice Loss Amplified Superstorm Sandy — Oceanography Journal

The story of the decade is the collapse of Arctic sea ice and its impact on our extreme weather (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“).

That merits the latest monthly update of sea ice volume by creative tech guru Andy Lee Robinson showing that “death spiral” is the right visual metaphor:

Many experts now say that if recent volume trends continue we will see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” within a decade. And that may well usher in a permanent change toward extreme, prolonged weather events “such as drought, flooding, cold spells and heat waves.”

It will also accelerate global warming in the region, which in turn will likely accelerate both the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet as well as the release of the vast amounts of carbon currently locked in the permafrost, which in turn will likely add 0.4°F – 1.5°F to total global warming by 2100.

For more on the death spiral, here’s Peter Sinclair’s latest video, featuring an interview with Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

Related Posts:

• NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather
• NOAA: Climate Change Driving Arctic Into A ‘New State’ With Rapid Ice Loss And Record Permafrost Warming