Posts tagged as:

methane

Siberian seabed methane: first numbers

by Gareth 5 March 2010

The latest estimate of methane release from the shallow seas off the north coast of Russia — the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) — suggests that around 8 teragrams per year (1Tg = 1 million tonnes) of the gas are reaching the atmosphere. This is equivalent to previous estimates of total methane release from all [...]

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Methane rise continues

by Bryan Walker 23 February 2010

More cautionary news on rising methane levels is reported in yesterday’s Independent. Two leading experts on CH4 in the atmosphere, Euan Nisbet and Ed Dlugokencky, were due to reveal at a conference that, after a decade of near-zero growth, “globally averaged atmospheric methane increased by [approximately] 7ppb (parts per billion) per year during 2007 and [...]

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Tipping and other points

by Gareth 15 February 2010

During the Copenhagen kerfuffle a lot of interesting stuff hit the web: here’s something that deserves a bit more air – a Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) special issue on tipping elements in the earth system, edited by John Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. [...]

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Oops, he did it again

by Gareth 8 January 2010

It pays to beware of leaving hostages to fortune: saying or doing something that might cause you some embarrassment in the future. There’s a very fine example in this recent blog post by Ian Wishart, titled “Top 10 global warming myths exposed“. It takes the form of a piece Wishart has submitted to the Coromandel [...]

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Siberian Shelf methane increased in 2009

by Gareth 8 January 2010

Methane release from the permafrost and hydrates under the East Siberian Shelf in autumn 2009 was the highest ever recorded, the leader of the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS), Igor Semiletov, has told the BBC. The results of last autumn’s research cruises are being prepared for publication in the near future. The BBC also quotes [...]

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Methane rise confirmed

by Gareth 22 December 2009

The recent global uptick in atmospheric methane levels is confirmed today by new figures from NIWA’s Baring Head station, near Wellington. Southern hemisphere methane rose by 0.7% over the two years 2007-2008. The video above, narrated by tropospheric chemist Katja Riedel gives an inside view of what goes on in and above the Baring Head [...]

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Marvellous distempered: the Copenhagen diagnosis

by Gareth 25 November 2009

The Copenhagen climate conference (COP15) opens its doors in a little under two weeks. To update participants on the science of climate a new assessment report, The Copenhagen Diagnosis, was released yesterday, and it makes grim reading. Designed to inform “a target readership of policy-makers, stakeholders, the media and the broader public” about the evidence [...]

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(Arctic) Change is now

by Gareth 5 September 2009

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has just published a new report on climate change in the Arctic — Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications [PDF], and it’s a fascinating read. Over the last two years I’ve blogged regularly on the changes being seen in the Arctic — sea ice reductions, melting of the [...]

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And now the bad news…

by Gareth 18 August 2009

Active methane plumes over the West Spitsbergen shelf discovered last summer are being driven by warming of an ocean current over the last 30 years, a new study(*) reports. The team on the British research vessel the James Clark Ross from the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (working with scientists from the University of Birmingham, Royal [...]

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The first cut is the deepest

by Gareth 6 July 2009

This week climate minister Nick Smith and international negotiator Tim Groser start their 2020 emissions target roadshow, ostensibly taking the pulse of the nation on the question of what target New Zealand should commit to in the run-up to Copenhagen in December. Much of the argument will undoubtedly centre around the costs of taking action. [...]

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