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+--- Thread: Arctic methane (/showthread.php?tid=1083)
Arctic methane - radtech497 - 08-06-2014
Now that the cause of the mysterious Siberian holes has been shown to be methane eruptions from within the warming permafrost, and a multinational expedition to the Arctic Ocean near the coast of eastern Siberia has reported (
here and here) bubbles from methane plumes originating in warming beds of methane clathrates up to 500 meters beneath the surface, methane has become a newsworthy topic.
The connection to OA is that, as the methane feedback loop gains in strength during the 1st century A.T., it will generate more extreme weather (for example, the "Polar Vortex" type of winter storms will increase in terms of area affected, intensity, and frequency, while summers will not have access to cool fronts from the North to power storm fronts and will be dry and hot) as weather patterns are increasingly deflected away from the warming Arctic. This, in turn, means that the accepted timetable for climate change will prove far too conservative as "milestones" appear years (if not decades) earlier than expected. It may also actually increase the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide as the demand for heating and cooling rises. As global temperatures get hotter, sea levels will rise and (more ominously) the increasingly warm and acidic seawater will release more carbon dioxide than it absorbs (several centuries will pass before equilibrium is naturally restored). As the climate destabilizes, popular and political concerns will demand that research efforts be focused on efforts relating to "solving" the crisis and/or ensuring the survival of human populations in the face of increasingly widespread shortages of food and drinking water. Research efforts lacking that focus will find themselves having to scramble even more than usual to obtain funding. Delays can be expected in the timelines of those developments. Life for the hapless denizens of the home world during the latter part of the first century and much of the following century will not be remembered for being idyllic. Earth, by the middle of the 2nd century A.T., will be a much different place than it was on the original Tranquility Day, with a different mix of landscapes, plant and animal species, and climatic regions.
Radtech497
RE: Arctic methane - Drashner1 - 08-07-2014
Given that all the OA 'core' technologies can be argued to have a beneficial impact in terms of either combatting climate change or mitigating its impact, I don't see it changing our tech timeline much, actually.
Steve Bowers has already done quite a lot of work on Hothouse Earth of the Interplanetary Age, so that may only need minor tweaking. This assumes that the climate change progresses exactly as has been predicted assuming methane release - which it probably won't. Rather it will progress, but likely with various unexpected effects or events that will give us a fair bit of wiggle room in how we depict the early timeline.
Todd
RE: Arctic methane - stevebowers - 08-07-2014
I'm very much open to any input about the progress of climate change in the next couple of centuries. This is a complex futurological issue, and we shouldn't forget to include the effects of any possible geoengineering attempts in the same period. Some of these might fail, or even make things worse - a possibilty we could make some narrative use of.
Another interesting possibility is that the increased heat in Northern Africa could restart the monsoon conditions that existed there back in the Eemian, when the planet was slightly hotter than now. The Sahara was criss-crossed by several rain-fed Nile-like rivers, which exist only as dried up beds today.
http://6000generations.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/river-corridors-across-the-sahara-during-the-last-interglacial/
I'm quite keen on the idea of 'terraforming' the Sahara at some point in the next 500 years of the OA scenario, and the re-establishment of a monsoon regime would help with this. These sort of rapid changes to the Earth's environment will cause many problems with existing ecosystems, even when the change seems to be an improvement.
RE: Arctic methane - ai_vin - 08-07-2014
On the subject of terraforming the Sahara: Have you heard of the "Sahara Forest Project" ???
http://saharaforestproject.com/
RE: Arctic methane - iancampbell - 08-07-2014
I'm not entirely sure about this, but I seem to remember a mooted project to make the Sahara bloom by digging a canal into the interior. Apparently, there are several areas considerably below sea level and a sea-level canal would introduce water from the Mediterranean, presumably increasing rainfall in the area around the new seas.
Link: Sahara Sea
RE: Arctic methane - ai_vin - 08-08-2014
(08-07-2014, 03:53 PM)iancampbell Wrote: I'm not entirely sure about this, but I seem to remember a mooted project to make the Sahara bloom by digging a canal into the interior. Apparently, there are several areas considerably below sea level and a sea-level canal would introduce water from the Mediterranean, presumably increasing rainfall in the area around the new seas.
Link: Sahara Sea
Yeah I remember that too. On a related note I wonder if sea level raise due to global warming could achieve the same thing without canals. Where, and how high, are the natural barriers that are currently keeping these below sea level areas from flooding now? Would there be enough sea level raise to breach them?
RE: Arctic methane - iancampbell - 08-08-2014
(08-08-2014, 01:25 AM)ai_vin Wrote:(08-07-2014, 03:53 PM)iancampbell Wrote: I'm not entirely sure about this, but I seem to remember a mooted project to make the Sahara bloom by digging a canal into the interior. Apparently, there are several areas considerably below sea level and a sea-level canal would introduce water from the Mediterranean, presumably increasing rainfall in the area around the new seas.
Link: Sahara Sea
Yeah I remember that too. On a related note I wonder if sea level raise due to global warming could achieve the same thing without canals. Where, and how high, are the natural barriers that are currently keeping these below sea level areas from flooding now? Would there be enough sea level raise to breach them?
Good question, to which I don't know the answer. A related question is that of how likely natural processes such as earthquakes are to open up channels such as this.
The idea was briefly resurrected as part of the discussions around Project Plowshare. One thing that nuclear explosions are rather good at doing is making big holes, especially if set up specifically to do that.
RE: Arctic methane - stevebowers - 08-08-2014
The Saharan basins may have been connected to the sea in the Sakiet el-Hamra region, but this doesn't seem to have happened in the last few interglacial periods.
RE: Arctic methane - radtech497 - 05-04-2015
In the course of coasting along the 'Net, I came across this very long and citation-heavy blog that updates the current climate data to last month. It has a definite bearing on the setting's early history (especially the first century A.T.), along with, IMO, significant reverberatory effects on the later timeline.
Radtech497
RE: Arctic methane - stevebowers - 05-04-2015
Yeah; linked from that blog, this paper is really interesting -
http://www.lter.uaf.edu/pdf/1859_Barrett_Lenton_2014.pdf
not only relevant to the Interplanetary Age and Hothouse Earth, but to climate management on Earth-like and terraformed planets in general. Climate change is likely to be a feature of all such planets, and even with climate engineering it seems impossible to avoid some change - sometimes this change could be dramatic and unexpected.