In Part Two we turn to other Arctic countries and their policies and plans for dealing with CH4 and permafrost.

Consider this. In 2019, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) declared that melting permafrost was one of the top 10 emerging environmental threats to humanity and the planet.

The map featured at the top of Part One tells you why. Southern permafrost boundaries were seen to be moving poleward decade by decade over the 20th and into the 21st century. Projections for 2050 and 2070 showed just how much of the permafrost was likely to melt.

What this means for CH4 and the other released hazards from previously frozen soils as identified in Part One, is that our climate change narrative will change despite efforts to contain industrial-sourced CH4 and other greenhouse gas emissions.

A UNEP-supported rapid response study in 2020 that looked at Canada’s Western Arctic listed several steps to mitigate and adapt to permafrost melt. But so far, little has been achieved in Canada. And the question that arises, therefore, are other state actors in the same boat?

What follows is how other Arctic nations are addressing mitigating and adapting to permafrost loss and CH4 emission increases.

Alaska (United States)

Almost two-thirds of Alaska is underlain by permafrost. As the permafrost melts it is leading to an increase in the number of collapsed homes and roads across the state. Restrictions have been imposed on the use of heavy industrial equipment in permafrost zones, mainly those off-road. And although CH4 emissions are seen as a concern, there is talk of preserving the underlying carbon reservoirs that are the source of the gas, but no practical program or policies to address the challenge.

Both the state and the federal governments recognize more needs to be done but there is nothing in the carbon sequestration and capture provision of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act to direct funds to permafrost CH4 mitigation.

NASA has been funding a University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) ten-year research study looking at arctic vulnerability. Called the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment or ABoVE, it studies CH4 release from thawing permafrost with bubbles like the ones seen in the image forming under the surface ice of thermokarst lakes that characterize much of Alaska’s surface terrain.

Katey Walter Anthony, a lead researcher of the NASA study states, “The mechanism of abrupt thaw…matters a lot for the permafrost-carbon feedback this century. We don’t have to wait 200 or 300 years to get these large releases of permafrost carbon. Within my lifetime, and my children’s lifetime, it should be ramping up. It’s already happening but it’s not happening at a really fast rate right now, but within a few decades, it should peak.”

What happens if the thawing becomes abrupt? It is estimated that CH4 release rates will increase by as much as 125 to 190% compared to what would happen in a gradual melt. The soil layers where the carbon is stored are as deep as 80 metres (260 feet). The sudden thawing causes kettle and thermokarst lakes that cover the Alaskan landscape to suddenly drain producing a feedback loop that causes even more CH4 to be released, which in turn leads to atmospheric temperature spikes which contribute to even more thaw. For the IPCC, in its attempts to develop a CH4 carbon budget to cap and reduce these potent greenhouse gas emissions, the scenario poses a nightmare.

Denmark (Greenland)

Greenland is Denmark’s autonomous dependency. It is uncertain whether permafrost melt is a greater threat to the island than the collapse of its glacial ice sheet. Greenlanders don’t live on the ice sheets. They live where the melting permafrost is shifting the ground beneath their feet. They face the same problems that Alaska and Canada are experiencing with roads, bridges, homes and buildings all built on frozen ground that is turning to mush. The results are Greenland faces significant barriers to long-term habitability with CH4 emissions probably the least of its concerns.

Recent studies point to the destabilization of Greenland’s ice sheet which covers more than 90% of the island. All indicators point to substantial increases in melting throughout this century inevitably increasing global sea levels. The permafrost leaking of CH4 and other greenhouse gasses is, therefore, a lower priority with little appearing in Danish or Greenlander policy planning.

Finland

In 2021 the Finnish government published its Arctic strategy, a document outlining its policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation, the well-being of its northern indigenous people, research initiatives, and the hardening of existing infrastructure and logistics.

As one of the eight founding member states of the Arctic Council, one would think that Finland’s Arctic strategy would include a section focused on dealing with permafrost greenhouse gas emissions. But there is only a brief mention of this area of concern. How brief? Permafrost is mentioned four times in the 73-page policy document. Greenhouse gas emissions are referenced six times. Methane is never mentioned and there is a single paragraph talking about “concrete measures” to reduce emissions and a reference to “low-emission technological solutions.” What those technological solutions are is never spelled out.

So like Canada and the United States in Alaska, it would seem that Finland doesn’t have a handle or solution for permafrost melt and CH4 emission leaks.

Norway and Iceland

In these two oceanside countries permafrost makes up only 8% of the landmass without including Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago. So CH4 emissions don’t get much play in their policy statements. But where the thawing permafrost presents a problem for Norway is on Svalbard with Spitsbergen the largest island in the group the focus. And a second CH4 problem lies off Norway’s continental shelf where frozen methane hydrates can be found on the seafloor near its coasts.

Svalbard lies well to the north of continental Norway and is east of Greenland. It is experiencing a faster rate of warming than almost anywhere else on the planet. Winter temperatures have risen 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the last few decades. The winter ice pack is shrinking by 10% per decade with summer ice loss even greater. By the end of the century, winter temperatures are expected to rise by 10 Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) over current levels.

Needless to say, Svalbard’s 2,300 residents are facing a permafrost melt challenge as is another important project that has its home on Spitsbergen. This is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a long-term storage bank for seeds that have been collected from around the world and are meant to be the last hope for humanity’s future in the event of a global catastrophe. The seed vault lies inside a frozen mountain where temperatures are kept at a constant -18 Celsius (-0.4 Fahrenheit) by the permafrost. In recent years artificial cooling systems have been introduced as Spitsbergen’s temperatures rise.

Methane hydrates are giant ice cubes containing CH4. They form when seeps of CH4 gas make contact with cold water in high-pressure conditions on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates remain stable only when climate conditions are constant. But that’s not the case off Norway’s coast where the Atlantic Ocean is heating not just at the surface but through its entire water column. That means several CH4 eruptions are likely to occur in the coming decades.

The consequences of ignoring methane hydrates are best demonstrated by the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon accident which occurred in 2010. It is believed that the presence of methane hydrates near the site may have contributed to the initial underwater blowout and the eventual fire that destroyed the rig killing 11 and injuring 17.

So Norway needs to address both Svalbard and methane hydrate in its CH4 strategic plan.

Russia

Russia’s CH4 and permafrost climate policies and strategies are not well known but they should be because 60% of the permafrost zone on our planet lies within its borders.

Siberian Russia is seeing permafrost melts that have caused some strange phenomena. In one case, a 30-meter wide (approximately 100 feet in diameter) hole opened up in July 2014 in Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula. The cause of the hole was CH4.  The permafrost 20 metres (66 feet) below the surface saw temperature rises of 2 Celsius (3.8 Fahrenheit) when atmospheric temperatures on the peninsula were rising by 5 Celsius (9 Fahrenheit). The Earth belched and the hole seen below opened up.

A 2020 study by geologists from the University of Bonn measured CH4 levels in another area of Siberia where there were significant signs of permafrost melt. Gas concentrations were significantly higher than the norm. In this part of Siberia, atmospheric temperatures over a two-decade period had risen 6 Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). The geologists reported their findings in an article entitled Methane release from carbonate rock formations in the Siberian permafrost area during and after the 2020 heat wave which appeared in PNAS.

Along with released CH4, Siberia continues to unearth flora and fauna frozen for tens of thousands of years. Whole Mammoths have been unearthed. So have bacteria and viruses that have lain dormant over the same amount of time. These emerging microbes represent a growing health risk.

Whether the CH4 release is slow and steady, or punctuated and abrupt, Russia needs to get a handle on the level of permafrost melt happening within its borders. So far, there haven’t been enough studies done to get a fuller picture of the CH4 problem in that country, and the Ukraine war will not produce any current and future haste in collecting the much-needed data.

Sweden

Of the total permafrost areas in Scandinavia consisting of Finland, Norway and Sweden, the latter’s share of what amounts to about 23,400 square kilometres (just over 9,000 square miles), is only 35%. When the country enacted its 2017 climate strategy, it set a target to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 85% from 1990 levels and to be in negative emissions territory by 2045. But nowhere in the plan is there a mention of getting permafrost greenhouse gas emissions under control.

I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise after reading how all the other Arctic countries are managing to largely ignore CH4 leaks from melting permafrost.

What To Do

Short of dramatically reducing our use of fossil fuels in all aspects of the global economy, there seems little at present that we can do to tackle CH4 seeping from melting permafrost.

One initiative, however, can be done. We need to get a better measure of the problem. That could help determine the pace by which we do rapid reductions of greenhouse emissions where we have the means to control the process.

We are fortunate in one respect because CH4 doesn’t hang around in the atmosphere for very long when compared to CO2, the bigger greenhouse gas contributor. CH4, unfortunately, does impact warming in the short term at a rate 80 times greater than CO2 when it is hanging around.

Another unanswered question is just how big could the permafrost melt problem become. Estimates of CH4 volumes embedded in permafrost that could thaw this century are as high as a Gigaton. That’s a billion tons released into the atmosphere.

Can we stop it from happening?

Could refreezing the permafrost using technology keep CH4 in the ground?

The Willow Project is an oil field in Alaska owned by ConocoPhillips. The company has proposed that it could use chillers inserted into the permafrost to keep it frozen. This would be counted as a carbon offset for emission contributions made by the company’s operations.

Is this doable?

Could it be deployed wherever there is permafrost?

The post The Disruption of Permafrost And How Governments Are Responding – Part 2: Other Countries appeared first on Techso Mogro.

Whether a slow ooze or a bomb, the question I ask in the title of this posting has yet to be answered by government policymakers. Is permafrost included in carbon budget calculations? My guess is, it is not and that’s a huge mistake.

Canada’s Answer to the Permafrost Challenge

The northern community of Tuktoyaktuk is built on top of permafrost and located on the Arctic Ocean coastline of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Permafrost is described as being harder than concrete in its frozen state. But when warmed the subsurface thawing causes landscapes to shift. Houses and buildings begin to tilt precariously as concrete and wooden pilings give way. A more ice-free Arctic Ocean is a more active sea with winds driving waves onshore contributing to growing coastal erosion. This in combination with rising sea levels is nibbling away at Tuktoyaktuk.

A September 2021 report noted that the cost to save Tuktoyaktuk was $42 million and rising. This money is budgeted to cover the next thirty years. The plan involves shoring up the Arctic Ocean coastline with a barrier of stone very much the way it is done on Pacific and Atlantic Ocean coastlines further south. Everyone knows this is a temporary fix. No one has a long-term plan that might require a retreat from the coastline and a movement of the town to a more stable inland site where only permafrost melt would be the threat.

What’s wrong with the stone barrier plan? There isn’t a lot of rock to harvest locally near Tuktoyaktuk which means hauling rock in from further inland and south over a road infrastructure that is also threatened by permafrost melt.

Of course, none of these plans speaks to the issue of CH4 release from melting permafrost and the contribution this greenhouse gas (GHG) will make to atmospheric warming in the short term.

Canada has a CH4 leak strategy. Unfortunately, it focuses entirely on CH4 emissions from fossil fuel sites. The following words come directly from a September 23, 2022 government policy statement that notes the country will:

• Implement measures across sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, to reduce the largest sources of methane emissions;
• Strengthen the clean technology sector and provide tools to industry to achieve cost-effective methane emission reductions while creating good-paying jobs;
• Advance scientific knowledge and technical capacity to improve methane detection, measurement, and reporting;
• Meet international climate targets under the Paris Agreement and Global Methane Pledge; and
• Solidify its global leadership and provide funding, tools, and best practices for other countries to achieve emissions reductions.

Notice, there is no mention of permafrost CH4 leaks in this policy statement. Yet another government site discusses the issue of Arctic melting and notes that “Canadian scientists and community members  have long raised concerns about how rapid climate change affects permafrost in Northern Arctic communities.” 

The page comes with a link to a report that raises alarm bells about the amount of GHGs contained within an increasingly destabilizing permafrost zone across the country’s north. It also discusses other issues related to melting permafrost including increasing coastal erosion, ground subsidence, landslides, altered surface water dynamics (kettle lakes vanishing overnight), damage to buildings, roads, power distribution networks and more,  and a growing number of health risks.

The post The Disruption of Permafrost And How Governments Are Responding – Part 1: Canada appeared first on Techso Mogro.

Farmers applying for the money need to demonstrate their ability to sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in three specific areas:

• Managing nitrogen by reducing fertilizer usage that contributes to surface and groundwater contamination.
• Using cover cropping by planting non-harvested winter cover crops and introducing intercropping, multiple cropping practices that involve growing two or more crops in proximity.
• Moving to rotational grazing where livestock is moved to different land segments to allow for grassland regeneration.

Farmers need to show data to prove GHGs are being reduced and carbon is being sequestered.

The European Union (EU) is following Canada’s initiative closely recognizing the GHG contribution made by the agricultural sector needs to be addressed in combatting climate change. The EU established a Climate Target Plan for 2030 that includes carbon farming among its programs. But it has yet to figure out how to structure the money side of it to get farmers to adopt carbon-storing and GHG reduction strategies. The Canadian system of direct payments could prove to be the model the continent adopts, or not.

In April of this year, the European Commission published its technical guide for carbon farming. EU member states were invited to introduce common agricultural policies that included a rollout of carbon farming. The amount of financial opportunity for farmers the Commission estimated to be worth between €38 and 58 billion.

Among the EU community, Eire is looking at a hybrid model for carbon farming that mixes carbon credits and cash payouts. In a recent interview conducted by The Irish Examiner, Agriculture Minister, Charlie McConalogue stated his department was launching a pilot program for on-farm carbon trading using the National Soil Sampling Programme to collect data for a baseline to assess progress. McConalogue suggested that the existing Woodland Environment Fund in Eire which uses carbon credits could be an alternative to the Canadian cash payment model. The pilot project in Eire is just one of a number being instituted within the EU.

None of these programs and initiatives address the emissions elephant in the room: enteric fermentation, responsible for a significant amount of GHGs from farming. Beef cattle are the culprits and it is their “cow farts,” that release significant amounts of methane (CH4), a far more potent GHG than carbon dioxide (CO2).

How to address the meat issue in a world where there is a rising demand particularly in the Developing World is particularly challenging. Three approaches immediately come to mind.

1. If we were all to reduce beef consumption then we would need less livestock which would decrease GHGs. In the Developed World, rising numbers of people becoming vegetarians is a movement associated with personal climate change initiatives. Physicians argue that a switch to a low meat diet has significant health benefits. So more meatless days here in North America and in Europe could be a way to combat chronic diseases and medical conditions associated with lifestyle and diet. The added bonus will be a personal contribution to GHG reductions. But it wouldn’t address the rise in meat demand in the Developing World.
2. There is the growing business of cultured meat which is an industrial process that turns cells from living animals into meat products. Once considered prohibitively expensive, and largely a laboratory experiment, cultured meat is now starting to appear in groceries in North America and Europe. Organizations focused on the ethical treatment of animals who don’t profess to be vegetarian or vegan-focused are keen to see cultured meat replace livestock as a food source.
3. There are experiments focused on changing animal feeds for livestock to reduce CH4 emissions. In a recently published study out of the University of California, Davis, adding seaweed to cattle diets reduced CH4 emissions by 82%. Seen as a way to continue to produce beef and dairy products to feed the world, it also considers that a significant amount of farmland is unsuitable for growing food crops. In a university press release, Ermias Kebreab, professor and Sesnon Endowed Chair of the Department of Animal Science and Director of the World Food Center makes this observation stating “much more land is suitable only for grazing, so livestock plays a vital role in feeding the 10 billion people who will soon inhabit the planet.” What is so magical about seaweed in a cow’s diet? Apparently, it inhibits an enzyme in the digestive system responsible for producing CH4. And you don’t need the cattle to eat a lot of it, just a small amount per day is enough to reduce climate-change causing emissions. The seaweed in the feed study was Asparagopsis taxiformis (AT), a form of red algae found in tropical to mid-latitude ocean waters. In the U.S. where many ranches are well away from the ocean, seaweed as a feed is a little more challenging than it is for university researchers at a California site within a stone’s throw of the Pacific. But a new project considered an aquatic moonshot is out to mass-produce and distribute AT to meet future demand. Known as the Greener Grazing Project, the plan is for ocean-based cultivation of AT coming up with innovative harvesting, post-harvest processing, and distribution of the feed supplement to where the cattle are in large quantities at an affordable price.

It would be interesting to see if Canada and the EU in the near future consider livestock CH4 emission reduction strategies as part of agricultural climate solutions initiatives.

The post Carbon Farming is One of the Tools Agriculture Needs to Bring to the Climate Change Table appeared first on Techso Mogro.

By its name, you would conclude that permafrost is a permanently frozen subsurface layer of soil, and rock. But permafrost is showing just how impermanent it can be these days in the latest research reported from NASA. Using the Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG), the NG stands for next-generation, NASA has been flying over large tracts of Alaska doing spatial sampling of the permafrost. In a 2017 study of 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles), AVIRIS-NG took a billion readings of methane emissions. The flights largely covered uninhabited terrain so human causes could be ruled out for any methane emissions observed.

The image below shows the overflying of an area in Alaska with the image on the left revealing human-built structures surrounded by natural terrain, while the image on the right reveals a methane hotspot originating from no known human-generated source.

The methane releases mapped by AVIRIS-NG indicate hotspots in proximity to lakes, ponds, streams and other wetlands. The hotspots tend to be within 30 to 40 meters (33 to 44 yards) of the natural water feature and fade the more distant from the liquid water. They almost disappear in their entirety beyond 300 meters (33o yards) from a water source.

In the study of the data gathered by AVIRIS-NG, it states in its summary that “understanding Arctic methane emissions is crucial to forecasting the region’s impact on global climate. Ongoing efforts suffer large uncertainties when upscaling emissions since direct observations rarely cover scales relevant to both process‐level (fine‐scale) biogeochemistry and land models that operate on much larger scales.”

Although the area of coverage may have been relatively small when compared to the entire northern permafrost belt that rings our planet, it is possible to extrapolate from these observations to make some global conclusions.

Why? Because the area studied is typical of the features found in Arctic landscapes (see illustration below). Its topography is called thermokarst, containing hollows, and depressions caused by thawing frozen ground, interspersed with kettle lakes and ponds that form from melting blocks of ice. Thermokarst landscapes feature subsurface soil, rock, and organic matter deposited by the seasonal cycles of plant growth and decay. Microorganisms feed on the dead vegetation and become the agents responsible for the methane that today is being released.

Researchers contributing to the IPCC annual climate reports have largely concluded that we can expect to see the permafrost areas of the Arctic shrink by 45% or greater just from the global atmospheric warming that has already taken place. So regardless of what we do to mitigate climate change moving forward they believe the Arctic is “locked-in” to a temperature rise that will be more than twice the global mean average increase, and that this will happen before the end of the 21st century. Rapidly thawing permafrost will be a significant contributor to that rise because of methane, which although has only a short atmospheric life before breaking down is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas (GHG).

When you look at the permafrost zone, an area 22.79 million square kilometers (8.8 million square miles, and approximately 24% of the land surface of the Northern Hemisphere), the AVIRIS-NG 30,000 square kilometer study is but a tiny portion. But it is telling us that methane leaks from permafrost melt are happening on a significant scale. With an estimated 1,672 billion tons of carbon contained in the permafrost, what will be the impact of a 45% reduction in that mass, and where will it all go? Much of it will be absorbed by the oceans, our largest natural carbon sink, but the rest, unless we come up ways to pull it from the air, will heat up our planet in ways not seen in hundreds of millions of years.

The post The Permafrost Methane Leak is Growing as Global Warming Increases appeared first on Techso Mogro.

CH4 is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2) although its longevity is short-lived when compared to the latter. Where CH4’s greenhouse impact lasts between 10 and 20 years, CO2’s lasts for centuries. The fact that there is more CH4 leaking into the atmosphere from U.S. oil and natural gas operations shouldn’t be a surprise considering the expansion in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) by American energy companies. This has led to a significant growth in oil and natural gas output. It was expected, with such growth in production that escaped CH4 levels would rise and the EPA established emission inventory methods to track it. Unfortunately, the EPA has gotten it wrong.

The emissions described in this report aren’t those created by the burning of the fossil fuels, but rather, from leaks at the wellhead and throughout the supply chain. The researchers report their findings with a high degree of confidence that EPA estimates are currently way off the mark. They believe this is so because the EPA based its estimates on the sampling of conventional fracking operations rather than abnormal operating conditions which exist at many U.S. sites. These abnormal conditions have been observed in significant quantity throughout exploration, production, transportation and storage of both oil and natural gas. At 20% of storage sites, in fact, CH4 emissions are occurring at a rate four times higher than EPA estimates.

It would behoove the EPA, even under Scott Pruitt, to get its methodology and facts straight. The oil and natural gas industry is the leading source of CH4 emissions in the United States. And contrary to popular opinion, produces far more than cow farts or landfill leaks. With no guarantee that the EPA intends to correct its mistakes on CH4 emissions tracking, there is no way to know how much the additional underestimated greenhouse gas is contributing to climate change.

And maybe that’s the point of it all. If you pretend it is not there then you can deny the problem exists.

The EPA, as of yet, has not called into question or responded to the report published this month. But one would think that the remaining well-meaning scientists at the EPA will take a look at the research teams’ methodology and its conclusions which state that CH4 emissions may be even higher than the data they have gathered.

This research report is one of 33 peer-reviewed papers associated with 16 different research projects, all published in academic journals. Funding of the studies has come from the Environmental Defense Fund, a number of foundations, and the natural gas industry itself.

The final analysis in this report states that EPA current estimates of CH4 emissions from oil and gas operations. somewhere between 1.3 and 1.6% of the total volume produced by the industry is off by as much as 53%. The actual number is 2% or higher. The 2% over the 1.3 to 1.6% translates to 10 million additional metric tons of CH4 leaking from U.S. operations annually or equivalent tp not accounting for the running of more than 200 coal-fired power plants in the country year round.

The post The U.S. EPA is No Longer Telling The Truth About Emissions appeared first on Techso Mogro.