AMEG Policy Brief

ARCTIC METHANE EMERGENCY GROUP
                                  

POLICY BRIEF

(Issued Sept.17, 2012)

The Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG) is an independent climate policy group ( website www.ameg.me ) giving advice to governments concerning the unfolding crisis in the Arctic arising from the precipitous decline in Arctic sea ice. AMEG comprises scientists, engineers, environmentalists, economists and communicators, who have cumulative expertise to judge the situation and recommend appropriate responses. They are particularly concerned with Arctic warming, associated ice losses and possibilities for consequent releases of methane on a large scale which has the potential to send global warming spiralling out of control. The group has become increasingly concerned about the effect of rapid Arctic warming on jet stream behaviour, which is producing increasingly frequent and severe climate extremes in the Northern Hemisphere. These extreme weather events are already causing decreases in global food production and rising grain prices with more declines expected. These trends can be expected to lead at some point to widespread famine.

AMEG is determined to bring the difficult truth to governments, having noted the difficult position of climate scientists who are often harassed if they bring this terrible news to the public. We will also provide frank assessments about all possible measures to deal with the rapidly growing problems.

Growing crisis in the Arctic requires rapid intervention

This year’s record minimum Arctic sea ice extent (some 22% below the 2007 and 2011 minimum extents) strongly suggests that a final collapse in the sea ice is underway and closely following an exponential downward trend in sea ice volume [1]. AMEG has repeatedly warned that this would happen and raised the issue in their submission to the UK Environment Audit Committee (EAC) hearing on "Protecting the Arctic," on Hansard record [2]. The complete collapse of sea ice (where practically none is left (<10%) for at least one day of the year) is now likely by 2016. The extreme danger lies in the repercussions of this sea ice loss, especially those resulting from seabed methane emissions and from altered jet stream behaviour – the latter already being experienced with extremes of drought and floods in many regions of the northern hemisphere. It should be noted that we cannot be certain that we would not start to experience significant problems with agricultural productivity even before we reach this point.

AMEG is confident that the crisis can still be averted successfully provided that immediate action is taken to cool the Arctic. This will inevitably involve a degree of intervention known as geoengineering as we have no other options to achieve the necessary rate and intensity of cooling required to stabilise the sea ice and buy time. AMEG therefore calls for urgent further research into technologies to help cool the Arctic and for tests and preparations to start without delay in order to be ready for rapid deployment of some of the more effective (and safe) techniques that are currently available for regional cooling of the Arctic. We must avert further collapse of sea ice and subsequent climate catastrophe. AMEG warns there is a real risk of further (and theoretically even nearly total) ice collapse by summer 2013.

AMEG stresses that to effectively reduce the threat of catastrophic climate change governments around the world must commit to a comprehensive plan of action and that geoengineering methods to cool the Arctic are now required on at least a temporary basis. AMEG repeats that it is also imperative for governments to act to immediately start reducing emissions dramatically.

Repeated warnings about sea ice collapse by AMEG sea-ice expert Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University have not been reflected in most discussions of the topic because most models have projected a much less rapid retreat as has been apparent through the World Climate Research Programme Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. The Phase 3 models (CMIP3) used for the IPCC AR4 drastically under-projected losses of ice and even the current Phase 5 (CMIP5) ones (which will be fundamental to the upcoming IPCC AR5) have not been able to replicate what is unfolding right now. It is therefore extremely unwise to rely upon such model predictions in light of empirical observations demonstrating that the rate of change is far worse than such models predict.

However, the collapse was predictable simply from observed trends of sea ice volume: the Arctic has been warming and sea ice has retreated, leaving more open water in summer and further thinning of the ice year on year. In summer, the minimum extent and thickness (and hence volume) of the sea ice is getting ever smaller. Exponential volume trends indicate zero ice by September 2016 or earlier, by which time the extent must necessarily also have collapsed. It would most likely be too late by this time to attempt intervention to cool the system due to the significantly greater amounts of heat absorbed by open water than by reflective ice.

With arctic methane emissions the focus of the climate community had mostly been on land-based permafrost emissions as it was assumed that sea-based emissions could not be activated much until far greater amounts of warming had time to penetrate the deeper ocean. However AMEG has been advised by Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov – Russian scientists who are the principal researchers around the East Siberian Arctic Shelf – that escalating emissions from the seabed there pose a threat of abrupt global climate change as the protective and insulating cover of the sea ice disappears [3]. There is so much methane stored under the seabed in this region that less than a one percent release of the potent greenhouse gas in that region alone, e.g. as a result of a large earthquake or rapid seabed heating (as caused by warmer river run off from warming land) could cause a substantial spike in the rate of global warming, considerably altering the path of global climate for the worse.

There are ominous signs of an escalation of seabed emissions with enormous plumes of methane bubbles rising from the shallow bed of the Laptev Sea reaching the surface. There have been recordings of extremely high rates of ebullition via sonar, recordings of extremely elevated atmospheric levels ( >300% background levels) from a ship traversing the Siberian coast and increasingly high atmospheric in situ readings at the Barrow monitoring station. Both satellite and dedicated aircraft measurements have indicated growing atmospheric methane levels over much of the Arctic Ocean.

AMEG has recently warned of increased climate extremes and a global food crisis that could deepen as the Arctic warms. This year’s severe drought in the US is not an isolated event; much of the world has been afflicted by extreme weather in one form or another, with floods and droughts impacting agriculture. Such extremes have been on the increase. Recent research by scientists such as Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University [4], shows convincing evidence that this increase is partly due to dramatic warming of the Arctic and changing polar jet stream behaviour. Food prices have already been persistently high for several years despite adverse economic circumstances, and adverse weather conditions is an identified factor behind this.

Droughts and floods have been gradually increasing in intensity for a number of years as predicted by the IPCC AR4 report (2007) on climate change. However the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, weakening and at times slowing the jet stream, increasing the frequency and duration of warm/dry spells and cool/wet spells, and this is making matters worse (and faster) than predicted. This year we have seen widespread crop failures and a rise in food prices, with a Global Hunger Alert by the World Bank [5]. Unless emergency measures are immediately taken to cool the Arctic and restore the sea ice one can expect an ever-worsening food crisis in years to come, with the prospect of famine on a vast scale and associated conflict and social breakdown.

There are other serious longer term repercussions of sea ice disappearance and Arctic warming such as accelerated disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which would cause very serious sea level rise. AMEG has chosen to focus on methane escalation and disruption of agriculture as they can be seen to be occurring already with potentially apocalyptic results if Arctic warming continues unabated.

AMEG’s conclusion is that there is now a planetary emergency. Only by grasping the nettle and intervening with great determination, as in a war effort, is there a chance of remedying the situation before it is too late. International collaboration to fight this common "enemy" of Arctic meltdown must bring all nations together, in the cause of our very survival.

References:

[1] PIOMAS sea ice volume

http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/piomas-data-confirm-exponential-trend.html

Note that reading for August 2012 is spot on the exponential trend line.

[2] Hansard on Environment Audit Committee evidence

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenvaud/writev/171/contents.htm

[3] ESAS threat

Shakhova, N. and I. Semiletov (2012). Methane release from the East-Siberian Arctic Shelf and its connection with permafrost and hydrate destabilization: First results and potential future development. Geophys. Res., Vol. 14, EGU2012-3877-1.

[4] Dr Francis et al. on link of Arctic Amplification to extreme weather events

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL051000.shtml

[5] Global hunger alert

http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/oped/129460-world-bank-issues-global-hunger-alert.html

The biggest story of all time

[scroll down for AMEG news release]

What is happening in the Arctic is what Peter Wadhams, myself and others in AMEG have been dreading – that our deductions from the physics of the Arctic sea ice situation have come true. We also understand some of the dreadful repercussions from a sea ice collapse, which nobody has wanted to believe. But it is also like a cloud lifted, because now we can tell the world that we’ve been right all along. The sea ice extent was bound to start collapsing within the next year or two, because the thickness was decreasing steadily. Now it’s happened. Now people will have to face up to the repercussions. Now people can realise that our only choice, if we want to avoid decent into a hellish nightmare, is to geo-engineer like mad – use all the measures and techniques at our disposal that we can deploy immediately or at least before next summer’s melt, in the hope of trying to prevent further collapse.

We have left action awfully late. The first sea ice collapse in 2007 should have prepared us for further collapse in the following years. The physics is elementary. It was not put in the climate models, which have continued to forecast that the sea ice would last for decades. The Hadley Centre models were predicting end century demise. This is what is cemented into IPCC AR4 on which all climate negotiations are based. These models have now proved rubbish. Yet it was the chief scientist at the Met Office, Prof Julia Slingo, ultimately responsible for the Hadley models, who rubbished the PIOMAS data on sea ice volume, saying that her models would prove Wadhams and AMEG wrong. This is on public record, because she gave this as evidence to the Environment Audit Committee hearing on “Protecting the Arctic”.

But far more serious than the denial of physics and the laws of nature was the denial of the precautionary principle – if our concerns about sea ice loss and repercussions (particularly a methane excursion) had even a small probability of proving correct, it would have been sensible to prepare for the worst by developing the geoengineering techniques that could provide enough cooling power to avoid a sea ice collapse. The cost would have been minimal in relation to the cost of trying to deal with repercussions – which some of us fear could be the end of civilisation. But nothing happened, so no geoengineering has been prepared.

AMEG has had a predicament – a dilemma. If we say how bad the situation really is, people will brand us as doom-mongers and not want to listen. If we don’t, then nobody will learn the truth.

But now it’s different. Our predictions on the sea ice have proved correct. We have the credibility. Our timescales are appropriate. (Only the other day a student wrote an article for the Ecologist saying that, after consulting experts at UEA, he was convinced that AMEG had got its timescales wrong.)

The most visible repercussions of sea ice decline and rapid Arctic warming (it’s warming five or six times the global average by my reckoning, and that ratio will leap up as the sea ice disappears) are the escalating emissions of methane, now seen to be bubbling in vast plumes from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf seabed, and the global weirding, seen to be affecting farmers all over the world as the Arctic warms, polar jet stream meanders more, sticking in places to cause weather extremes, long periods of both hot dry weather and cool wet weather. These two repercussions have been AMEG’s focus of late, see press release.

Never in the history of the human race has there been so much danger to confront. We have the brains – we should have the intelligence – to deal with it. Psychologically we have real problems, continuing to believe that we are immortal and “it can’t happen to us”. It is.

Best wishes,

John
Chair, AMEG
www.ameg.me

ARCTIC SEA ICE CRASHES: GLOBAL FOOD AND METHANE FEEDBACK EMERGENCY - AMEG WARNS ACTION NOW IMPERATIVE AMEG press release, 1st September 2012 The record low Arctic sea ice extent, reached in the past few days, shows that a collapse in the sea ice is underway, and the minimum to be reached in a few weeks, could be as much as a million square kilometres below the September 2007 and 2011 minima (which were almost the same). AMEG has repeatedly warned that this could happen, raising the issue in their submission to the UK Environment Audit Committee (EAC) hearing on “Protecting the Arctic”, on Hansard record. The complete collapse of sea ice, till practically none is left for at least one day of the year, is now likely by 2015. The extreme danger lies in the repercussions of the sea ice loss, especially those resulting from seabed methane emissions and from altered jet stream behaviour – the latter already being experienced with extremes of drought and floods in different parts of the northern hemisphere. However AMEG is confident that a crisis can be averted if immediate action is taken to cool the Arctic, but this will inevitably involve a degree of intervention known as geoengineering because of the large cooling power required. Preparations need to start straightaway for deployment of the best candidate techniques, with a view to rapid deployment, hopefully in time to head off a worse collapse of sea ice next summer. The repeated warnings about the sea ice by AMEG sea ice experts (including Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University) have been ignored or scorned as doom- mongering by climate scientists, who claim that the sea ice will last for decades. So the current collapse may come as a nasty surprise to many people. However the collapse could have been expected from observed trends, particularly of sea ice volume. The Arctic has been warming, sea ice has retreated leaving open water in summer, and the relentless Arctic summer sun has warmed the water to produce further thinning of the ice. Each year, come the minimum ice extent at the end of summer, the thickness and volume of the ice has been less. The trend reaches zero volume before September 2015, by which time the extent must obviously have collapsed. The AMEG warning on methane emissions has also been ignored or scorned by climate scientists, who claim that the emissions will be too slow to have an appreciable global warming effect this century. However AMEG has been advised by Russian scientists, Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov, that escalating emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf seabed pose a threat of abrupt climate change, as the protective and insulating cover of the sea ice disappears. There is so much methane stored under the seabed that only one percent release of this potent greenhouse gas, e.g. as a result of a large earthquake or rapid seabed heating, could cause intolerable global warming. AMEG has recently warned of increased climate extremes and a global food crisis that will deepen as the Arctic warms. This year’s severe drought in the US is not an isolated event; much of the world has been afflicted by extreme weather in one form or another, with floods and droughts impacting agriculture. Such extremes have been on the increase. Recent research by scientists, such as Dr Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, shows convincing evidence that this increase is related to dramatic warming of the Arctic and changing polar jet stream behaviour. Droughts and floods have been gradually increasing in intensity for a great many years, as the IPCC AR4 report (2007) predicted would occur with global warming. However the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. This has weakened the jet stream, increasing the frequency and duration of warm/dry spells and cool/wet spells, and thereby making matters much worse. This year we have seen widespread crop failures and a rise in food prices*. Unless emergency measures are immediately taken to cool the Arctic and restore the sea ice, one can expect an ever worsening food crisis in years to come, with the prospect of famine on a biblical scale. There are other serious repercussions of sea ice disappearance and Arctic warming, such as a disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet to cause massive sea level rise. But AMEG has chosen to focus on methane escalation and the food crisis because they can be seen to be already under way, with apocalyptic results if Arctic warming continues unabated. AMEG’s conclusion is that we have a planetary emergency as a result of the downward spiral of sea ice. Only by grasping the nettle and applying geoengineering with great determination, as in a war effort, do we have a chance of remedying the situation before it is too late. International collaboration to fight this common “enemy” of Arctic meltdown must bring all nations together, simply in the cause of survival. * Severe Droughts Drive Food Prices Higher, Threatening the Poor - World Bank