Something had to give - Baffin Island hit by M4.6 earthquake

Something had to give - Baffin Island hit by M4.6 earthquake

anomaly Arctic Baffin Island earthquake methane ocean pressure rise temperature

Unknown 2/12/2015 Add Comment

An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.6 on the Richter scale hit Baffin Island on February 12, 2015, at 02:11:40 (UTC). The image below, from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), shows the epicenter of the quake.

The earthquake occurred at a time when surface temperature anomalies over parts of North America and Greenland are at the bottom end of the scale, while surface temperature anomalies over parts of Siberia are at the top end of the scale, as illustrated by the image below.

The image below shows pressure differences reaching the top and bottom ends of the scale (left). At the same time, sea surface temperature anomalies around North America and Greenland are at the top end of the scale (right). It appears that something had to give. 

This earthquake is important, given that it hit an area without large faultlines (though earthquakes are common here, also see this discussion). The Baffin Island earthquake occurred in an area prone to glacial isostatic adjustment, as illustrated by the image below.

From "http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov", (unfiltered version). Credit: A, G., J. Wahr, and S. Zhong (2013) "Computations
of the viscoelastic response of a 3-D compressible Earth to surface loading: an application to Glacial Isostatic
Adjustment in Antarctica and Canada", Geophys. J. Int., 192, 557–572, doi: 10.1093/gji/ggs030

Glacial isostatic adjustment as a phenomenon takes place over relatively long periods. An additional problem is extreme weather events influencing the occurence of earthquakes more immediately.

Here's an update on the situation. Five earthquakes occured on February 13, 2015, close together, including a magnitude 7.1 at the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, south of Greenland:
- M5.3 Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge 2015-02-13 18:48:16 UTC 10.0 km
- M4.9 Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge 2015-02-13 18:58:06 UTC 10.0 km
- M7.1 Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge 2015-02-13 18:59:12 UTC 13.8 km
- M4.7 Reykjanes Ridge 2015-02-13 21:25:18 UTC 10.0 km
- M5.2 Reykjanes Ridge 2015-02-13 19:33:10 UTC 14.2 km

This M7.1 is the largest earthquake to hit the area around Greenland in a decade or more. And it's not just this one that has recently hit the area. The image below shows the recent Baffin Island quake in yellow, and the earthquakes that occurred today at the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge in orange. Furthermore, there are recent quakes on Iceland in orange and yellow. There were also three large earthquakes in the Greenland Sea, the 4.6 one is highlighted in blue (otherwise it would have been hidden).

The image below gives an impression of extreme weather events on February 13-14, 2015. 

Boston has meanwhile run out of room to dump snow, while roofs have collapsed in Massachusetts under the weight of the snow. Lnks between extreme weather events and earthquakes have been discussed before. Extreme weather events look set to intensify as temperatures in the Arctic keep rising. This is very worrying, given the vulnerability of methane under the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Furthermore, there are also indications that methane could be released from Greenland due to sequences of strong compaction and expansion of the snow and ice cover, due to extreme weather events. 

High methane levels have recently been recorded in the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean, including over Baffin Bay.

Methane is present in sediments under the Arctic Ocean in the form of free gas and hydrates. Earthquakes can send out strong tremors through the sediment and shockwaves through the water, which can trigger further earthquakes, landslides and destabilization of methane hydrates.

As temperatures in the Arctic keep rising, the jet streams and polar vortex are changing their shape, in particular becoming more wavy, which can cause more extreme weather events such as the events described above.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog. 

Post by Sam Carana.

Wild Weather Swings

Wild Weather Swings

anomaly Arctic Ocean Greenland temperature Wild Weather Swings

Unknown 10/06/2014 Add Comment

Above combination-image illustrates some of the wild temperature swings that are taking place on the Northern Hemisphere. While the average temperature anomaly on the Northern Hemisphere may not differ much between the two dates (+0.95°C versus +1.07°C), huge temperature swings can occur locally, as is the case in Greenland.

Note that the overall temperature anomaly for the Arctic is +2.16°C and +3.34°C, respectively, but it can be much more locally. What contributes to these high temperatures in the Arctic is that heat from the Arctic Ocean is entering the atmosphere where there still is open water, while large emissions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean are exercizing their high immediate local warming potential.

On the Southern Hemisphere, things aren't much different, as illustrated by the combination-image below.

The two images show that, while the average anomaly for the Southern Hemisphere and for the Antarctic may not differ much between the two dates, temperature anomalies locally may go from one end of the scale to the other.

And it's not merely temperatures that seem to have gone wild. Winds have strengthened, which can push sea ice far out into the sea surrounding Antarctica, while the resulting open water quickly freezes over. The result is expanding sea ice that traps heat in the ocean, as discussed in an earlier post. It appears that much of the extra energy trapped by greenhouse gasses becomes manifest as kinetic energy, in the form of stronger winds, storms and ocean currents.

In conclusion, these huge temperature swings combine with pressure swings and storms, and with swings between expansion and contraction of soil and ice, resulting in severe shocks to ecosystems and infrastructure.

The threat is that infrastructure will increasingly come under stress. Infrastructure that was built up over hundreds, if not thousands of years, is not easily replaced with more durable alternatives. Parts of infrastructure such as roads, buildings, railways, storm water and drainage systems, water supply, dams, levees and power poles may collapse without much scope for repair.

Furthermore, soil degradation will increase, as in some areas storms grow stronger and run-off causes more erosion, while other areas may be hit by more severe droughts and dust-storms. In both cases, ecosystems will suffer and can go into shock, bringing food supply and habitat progressively and possibly abruptly under threat.

As more and deeper cracks and fractures appear in sediments and soils, more methane may start entering the atmosphere. Indications that the integrity of the permafrost is breaking up under the stress of such swings were discussed in earlier posts such as this one and this one. The extra methane can constitute a powerful additional feedback loop, causing strong additional warming locally.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.


References and Related Posts


- Climate Plan
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-plan.html

- Antarctica linked to Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/09/antarctica-linked-to-arctic.html

- What's wrong with the weather?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/07/whats-wrong-with-the-weather.html

- Is Global Warming breaking up the Integrity of the Permafrost?
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/05/is-global-warming-breaking-up-the-integrity-of-the-permafrost.html

- Earthquakes in the Arctic Ocean
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/earthquakes-in-the-arctic-ocean.html

- Ten Dangers of Global Warming (written March, 2007)
http://samcarana.blogspot.com/2007/03/ten-dangers-of-global-warming.html

Post by Sam Carana.

Warm water extends from Laptev Sea to North Pole

Warm water extends from Laptev Sea to North Pole

anomaly Arctic Ocean Laptev Sea methane North Pole SST warm water

Unknown 9/30/2014 Add Comment

The NOAA NESDIS image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies of well over 1ºC extending to the North Pole.

The image below gives a world view, showing SST anomalies at the top end of the scale in the Laptev Sea.

The top end of the scale on the above image is 5ºC (or 9ºF).

The visualizations above and below uses a much higher scale. Even this higher-end scale doesn't appear to fully capture the dire situation we are in.

Above image shows warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait and from the North Atlantic. For months to come, the Gulf Stream will keep pushing warm water into the Arctic Ocean (i.e. water that is warmer than the water in the Arctic Ocean). It takes some time (i.e. months) for the warm water from the north Atlantic to arrive in the Arctic Ocean.

Last year, methane emissions started to become huge in October and this lasted for some six months. The image below, from an earlier post, shows methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean on October 16/17, 2013.

The image below, from another earlier post, shows methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean on October 31, 2013.

The image below, from yet another earlier post, shows methane levels as high as 2662 parts per billion on November 9, 2013.

This year, there is even more ocean heat present, especially in the north Atlantic and the north Pacific. On September 29, 2014, methane levels as high as 2641 parts per billion were recorded and it looks like worse is yet to come.

The video below, Sea floor methane hydrate climate hazard, is an extract produced by Peter Carter from a presentation by Miriam Kastner, uploaded 7 August 2008 at Youtube.



The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

Post by Sam Carana.

Warm water flowing into Arctic Ocean

Warm water flowing into Arctic Ocean

anomaly Arctic Ocean clathrates Harold Hensel hydrates methane sea surface temperature

Unknown 9/18/2014 Add Comment

by Harold Hensel

For the first time in thousands of years, warm water is flowing into the Arctic Ocean. Warm water from the deep ocean is showing up on surface images. There is no way to put this into the context of 'normal.' Historic temperatures have kept the Arctic frozen on an even keel for thousands of years. Even if there was a 'natural cycle' it has been completely overridden by the astonishing amount of pollution that is going into the atmosphere.

Over 90 percent of Earth's energy imbalance has been going into the oceans, almost unnoticed by people keeping track of the temperatures in the atmosphere. The warmer ocean water is going through the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea, Barents Sea, East Siberian Sea and worst of all, the Laptev Sea.

The Gakkel Ridge crosses the Arctic Ocean from Greenland to the Laptev Sea, see earlier post

There are methane hydrate concentrations in all of these areas up to 1,500 feet deep for miles and miles. There are fractures here that give mantel methane a route to the surface that have been safely sealed by ice. The hydrates and seals are thawing.

In 2013, huge amounts of methane erupted over the Gakkel Ridge and
the Laptev Sea in October, with levels as high as 2662 ppb on November 9.
In 2014, levels over 2400 ppb were recorded on September 14, 15 and 16.

On the Greenland side, warm water is flowing into the Arctic from the Labrador, Greenland and Norway seas. The international SWERUSs-C3 expedition on the icebreaker Oden is recording 'mega flares' of methane. There are many factors involved in warming the Arctic Ocean, but warm water flowing into it is one of the worst.

Harold Hensel
Cedar Rapids

State Of Extreme Emergency

State Of Extreme Emergency

anomaly Arctic clathrates emissions Gulf Stream GWP hydrates Malcolm Light methane ocean sea surface temperature

Unknown 9/04/2014 Add Comment

by Malcolm Light

PRESIDENT OBAMA MUST DECLARE A STATE OF EXTREME NATIONAL EMERGENCY AND CEASE ORCHESTRATING A WAR WITH RUSSIA. HE MUST RECALL HIS ENTIRE ARMY AND NAVY PERSONNEL TO THE UNITED STATES TO BEGIN A MASSIVE CONVERSION OF THE US ENERGY SYSTEM TO SOLAR AND WIND POWER. THIS CONVERSION MUST RESULT IN ALL 600 COAL POWER STATIONS AND NUCLEAR STATIONS BEING COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN IN THE NEXT 5 TO 10 YEARS. ALL SURFACE TRANSPORT BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MUST BE ENTIRELY ELECTRIFIED AND AIR TRANSPORT CONVERTED TO METHANE OR HYDROGEN FUEL. IF THIS IS NOT DONE, HUMANITY WILL BE FACING TOTAL EXTINCTION IN AN ARCTIC METHANE FIRESTORM BETWEEN 2040 AND 2050.

The US and Canada must cut their global emissions of carbon dioxide by 90% in the next 10 to 15 years, otherwise they will be become an instrument of mass destruction of the Earth and its entire human population. Recovery of the United States economy from the financial crisis has been very unsoundly based by the present Administration on an extremely hazardous "all of the above" energy policy that has allowed continent wide gas fracking, coal and oil sand oil mining and the return of widespread drilling to the Gulf. Coast. This large amount of fossil fuel has to be transported and sold which has caused extensive spills, explosions and confrontations with US citizens over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline. Gas fracking is in the process of destroying the entire aquifer systems of the United States and causing widespread earthquakes. The oil spills are doing the same to the surface river run off.

We are now facing a devastating final show down with Mother Nature, which is being massively accelerated by the filthy extraction of fossil fuels by US and Canada by gas fracking, coal and tar sand mining and continent wide bitumen transport. The United States and other developed nations made a fatal mistake by refusing to sign the original Kyoto protocols. The United States and Canada must now cease all their fossil fuel extraction and go entirely onto renewable energy in the next 10 to 15 years otherwise they will be guilty of planetary ecocide - genocide by the 2050's.

The volume transport of the Gulf Stream has increased by three times since the 1940's due to the rising atmospheric pressure difference set up between the polluted, greenhouse gas rich air above North America and the marine Atlantic Air. The increasingly heated Gulf Stream with its associated high winds and energy rich weather systems then flows NE to Europe where it recently pummeled Great Britain with catastrophic storms. Other branches of the Gulf Stream then enter the Arctic and disassociate the subsea Arctic methane hydrate seals on subsea and deep high - pressure mantle methane reservoirs below the Eurasian Basin- Laptev Sea transition. This is releasing increasing amounts of methane into the atmosphere producing anomalous temperatures, greater than 20°C above average. Over very short time periods of a few days to a few months the atmospheric methane has a global warming potential from 1000 to 100 times that of carbon dioxide.

There are such massive reserves of methane in the subsea Arctic methane hydrates, that if only a few percent of them are disassociated, they will lead to a jump in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere by 10°C and produce a "Permian" style major extinction event which will kill us all. The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane global warming veil that is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and it already totally envelopes the United States. A giant hole in the equatorial ozone layer has also been discovered in the west Pacific which acts like an elevator transferring methane from lower altitudes to the stratosphere where it already forms a dense equatorial global warming stratospheric band that is spreading into the Polar regions.

During the last winter, the high Arctic winter temperatures and pressures have displaced the normal freezing Arctic Air south into Canada and the United States producing never before seen, freezing winter storms and massive power failures. When the Arctic ice cap finally melts towards the end of next year, the Arctic sea will be aggressively heated by the sun and the Gulf Stream. The cold Arctic air will then be confined to the Greenland Ice cap and the hot globally warmed Arctic air with its methane will flow south to the United States to further heat up the Gulf Stream, setting up an anticlockwise circulation around Greenland. Under these circumstances Great Britain and Europe must expect even more catastrophic storm systems, hurricane force winds and massive flooding after the end of next year due to a further acceleration in the energy transport of the Gulf Stream. If this process continues unchecked the mean temperature of the atmosphere will rise a further 8° centigrade and we will be facing global deglaciation, a more than 200 feet rise in sea level rise and a major terminal extinction event by the 2050's.

Post by Zaven Ohannessian.

Persistently High Methane Concentrations over Beaufort Sea

Persistently High Methane Concentrations over Beaufort Sea

anomaly Arctic Beaufort Sea Bering Strait methane Oc ean sea surface temperatures SST temperature

Unknown 8/19/2014 Add Comment

High methane concentrations have been showing up over Beaufort Sea over the past few days, as shown on the image below. This follows the recent high methane concentrations over the East Siberian Sea.

The persistent character of these very high methane concentrations over the Arctic Ocean indicates that methane has started to erupt from clathrates under the seabed, triggered by very warm water reaching the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

Methane eruptions from hydrates in sediments under the Arctic Ocean helped mean methane levels reach new records, with mean global methane readings as high as 1835 parts per billion recorded at several altitudes on August 17, 2014.

The very high sea surface temperature anomalies that show up on above image give an idea of the inflow of warm water from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. This is further highlighted by the combination image below.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

Post by Sam Carana.

Heatwave to hit Greenland

Heatwave to hit Greenland

albedo anomaly Greenland heatwave ice melt sea level rise snow

Unknown 8/15/2014 Add Comment

A heatwave with temperature anomalies exceeding 36°F (20°C) is expected to hit Greenland between August 16 and 22, 2014, as illustrated by the image on the left and the animation on the right. 

Such heatwaves can be expected to hit the Arctic more frequently and with greater intensity, as temperatures in the Arctic are rising faster than elsewhere on Earth.

Such heatwaves can result in massive melting on Greenland, as persistent heat changes the texture of the snow and ice cover, in turn reducing its reflectivity. This makes that less sunlight is reflected back into space and is instead absorbed. 

The image below illustrates what a difference the presence of sea ice can make.

from: Arctic Warming due to Snow and Ice Demise

As the NSIDC/NOAA graphs below shows, melting on Greenland has been relatively modest this year when compared to the situation in 2012. By July 12, 2012, 97% of the ice sheet surface had thawed, according to this NASA analysis and this NOAA Arctic Report Card.

Melting on Greenland directly affects sea level rise, and melting on Greenland is accelerating due to a number of factors.

Projections of melting on Greenland have long been based on a warming atmosphere only, ignoring the warmer waters that lubricate glaciers and that warm Greenland's bedrock canyons that sit well below sea level.

Furthermore, there are growing quantities of black carbon deposits as a result of burning of fossil fuel and biomass. High temperatures have recently caused ferocious wildfires in Canada that have in turn caused a lot of black carbon to go up high into the atmosphere.

And of course, the atmosphere over the Arctic is warming up much faster than most models had projected. This in turn causes triggers further feebacks, including more extreme weather events such as heatwaves and rain storms that can be expected to hit Greenland with ever more frequency and ferocity. Further feedbacks include methane eruptions from the heights of Greenland, as discussed at the Arctic Feedbacks Page.

When also taking into account the accelerating impact of such factors on melting in Greenland, sea levels could rise much faster than anticipated, as illustrated by the image below.

from: more than 2.5m sea level rise by 2040? 

Note that sea level rise is only one of the many dangers of global warming, as discussed in the 2007 post Ten Dangers of Global Warming.

The image on the right shows a temperature forecast for August 16, 2014, with parts of Greenland changing in color from blue into green, i.e. above the melting point for snow and ice.

Such high temperatures are now hitting locations close to the North Pole ever more frequently, due to the many feedbacks that are accelerating warming in the Arctic, as discussed at this Feedbacks page.

One of the most dangerous feedbacks is a sudden eruption of huge quantities of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as discussed in a recent post.

The impact of such feedbacks can be accumulative and interactive, resulting in self-reinforcing feedbacks loops that can escalate into runaway warming.

Below is another forecast by ClimateReanalyzer for August 16, 2014, showing the remarkable ‘greening’ of Greenland, as well as the very high temperatures reaching the higher latitudes of North America.

Also see the very high sea surface temperatures around Greenland on the image below, created with ClimateReanalyzer.

Sea surface temperature anomalies on August 15, 2014. 

In conclusion, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog. 

Post by Sam Carana.