If you can get past the first two paragraphs, the rest of the interview is a must read!
Interview on the warming of the Arctic region's permafrost and release of methane with Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky, of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, January 2009
Summary: CA-CP had the opportunity to interview Dr. Romanovsky, a permafrost and climate change expert of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Dr. Romanovsky discusses his research in the field of permafrost geophysics, history of permafrost, thermokarst lakes, methane and sub-sea permafrost degradation, and his recent trip to Mongolia. Dr. Romanovsky addresses the key technical challenges in his field, the challenges of incorporating permafrost processes into models and explains the implications of crossing regional climatic thresholds. Dr. Romanovsky believes Interior Alaska is just a half a degree Celsius away from crossing such a threshold and, if global warming continues at its current rate, within 20–50 years it could be crossed. This would release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere irreversibly, causing a positive feedback to climate change.
CA-CP: Dr. Romanovsky, can you explain the scope of your work and research and your interest in this field?
Dr. Romanovsky: I work on permafrost geophysics which means that I study the temperature field of the upper part of the earth’s crust and observe the temperatures below 0°C where material is frozen. I study the history of the development of the permafrost, the present state of permafrost, and evaluate possible changes in the future. Of course the most significant agent here is climate because permafrost is a product of a cold climate and if the climate changes then permafrost will follow sooner or later. Our major focus is to see how permafrost reacts to changes in climate. I also study whether changes in permafrost can have some feedback on the climate. This question is as interesting and as important as the direct effect of changes in climate on permafrost. Permafrost geophysicists are also interested in how permafrost changes relate to other components of the Arctic system such as the Arctic ecosystem, vegetation, carbon cycle, and hydrology – how water relates to permafrost. We also study how humans interact with permafrost, how they affect permafrost and how changes in permafrost affect humans. We use geophysical methods to study permafrost and one of the most direct methods is measuring temperature in the upper several tenths to hundredths meters in subsurface. We define permafrost as the ground, the rocks or any earth material (except for glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice) that is below 0°C for two or more years. We look to see if there is any permafrost, and we study its state – whether it’s stable or unstable – and we look at its dynamics. We look back as far back as records allow. They don’t go too far back but we are trying to establish as many sites as possible to gather data for the future to compare with current observations. This is one big part of our research – measuring the temperature in permafrost in as many places as possible. As geophysicists we use mathematical models to understand why temperatures are changing in the permafrost and to predict what will happen if climate changes. A more recent tool is remote sensing. All of our sites for measurements of permafrost are just spots in a huge area and to do some sort of correlation and interpolation between them we need to use modeling and remote sensing.
CA-CP: Experts talk of climatic thresholds – the point at which it is hard to turn back to previous conditions. How close are we to approaching climatic thresholds with regard to permafrost?
Dr. Romanovsky: When you talk about permafrost, there are some regional thresholds. It would be hard to say there is a global threshold. In terms of regions, for example, in the interior of Alaska, we are very close to this threshold. We are just a half a degree Celsius off of it and in terms of time, it all depends on how climate will warm in the future and the rate of warming. But it could be on the order of 20–50 years.
CA-CP: If you cross this climatic threshold in Alaska, what would the impacts be?
Dr. Romanovsky: What is happening now is that some permafrost is thawing already. It is really a threshold because you can’t go back easily and put all this ice that will melt out of permafrost that is water and put it back as massive ground ice. You’d need another glacial period, and in this case it’s not reversible. It’s hard to put ice back. If the threshold is crossed back to colder conditions, it could develop new permafrost but not the same as it is now – generally less ice and less carbon. No return to the previous state. For Siberia and the icy permafrost there, there are two degrees to go before we cross a threshold. So, it is not as much threat yet. However, in southern regions of western Siberia there is a lot of carbon sequestered and the permafrost is actively warming there and thawing in some places. In terms of time scale, I think we could cross a threshold there in several decades. The Northern slope of Alaska is more stable. We maybe have another 70–100 years before we cross a threshold there – same for that area in Siberia. So for colder areas, this threshold is more distant and for warmer permafrost, which has ice and carbon in it, the climatic threshold is pretty close already.
CA-CP: We understand you were just on a trip to study permafrost in Mongolia?
Dr. Romanovsky: Yes, in Mongolia we visited our colleague who is setting up several dozens of permafrost observation sites. We spent 12 days driving from one site to another and covered 3000 km. We measured temperatures in boreholes and installed equipment to help our colleague make these measurements more technically accurate and easier to conduct.
CA-CP: If you look at the density of borehole measurements across the globe is it a fairly even distribution or are there areas of the earth that are better covered for permafrost measurements than others?
Dr. Romanovsky: In general, the research in the high latitudes is challenging, and I don’t know anywhere where we have good coverage. Most permafrost boreholes are related to other activities because in the past it has been difficult to get funds to study permafrost itself. Deep boreholes are all related to oil and gas research areas, or geological research. When the boreholes are no longer used for these activities, they can be used to measure temperature in permafrost. This is why there is better coverage in the North Slope of Alaska. We have good coverage around Fairbanks, but we don’t have good coverage in many other areas. The same goes for other countries. In Russia, there are many boreholes in West Siberia where there are a lot of oil and gas activities – but almost none in central Siberia.
CA-CP: Can you explain the history of all of this permafrost carbon and how the carbon got into the ground?
Dr. Romanovsky: It’s very important to understand history to understand what could happen in the future and it’s true of permafrost because of possible continuous warming. If you know the age of permafrost – when it was created – then you can have a good idea when it will start to thaw. Younger permafrost is less stable because it was a product of the Little Ice Age and is thawing now very actively. We are also observing older permafrost from the last several thousand years starting to thaw. If warming continues, we will see the older permafrost developed in the last glacial period start to thaw. History is important for predictions as well. In general, it is important to know how permafrost developed, and then you can explain such facts as the carbon source. There are places, especially in Siberia, where permafrost is as old as two million years. But most of the current permafrost was shaped during last glacial period – some time between 20 and 80 thousand years ago. It was much colder then than it is now, and permafrost distribution was much wider. Permafrost occupied a significant part of Europe, a very significant part of northern Eurasia, practically all Russia, Mongolia, and northern China. In North America, all non-glaciated areas in Canada and Alaska were permafrost areas. Canada had the largest distribution of permafrost – almost all of it was occupied by permafrost. Permafrost existed in some places underneath the huge glacier that covered North America. Remember that the sea level was 120 meters lower, so permafrost was forming on all Arctic shelves because conditions were harsh – 10–15 degrees colder than now. A very specific ecosystem developed during this period of time. All of Siberia and Alaska was made up of mammoth steppe or grasses with no trees. Except for some mountain ranges, all the land was covered in productive grassland and huge number and variety of big grazers such as mammoths, horses, bison, and caribou. It is important to know that they were there exactly when a significant amount of carbon was sequestered in the sediments. The sedimentation rate was high – mostly wind blown dust but also some aquatic sediments as well. Meters of this new soil could be developed in thousands of years. Because the sedimentation rate was high and productivity of this grass tundra was high, lots of carbon was buried in the soil and frozen in the permafrost almost as soon as it was deposited and since then, in many places in the present day permafrost areas, it’s still frozen. In this period of time, a significant amount of carbon was taken out of the atmosphere and deposited/sequestered in an ice complex. An ice complex is a layer of soil/ice, in some places 40–50 meters thick in a frozen state. These exist in East Siberia and in Alaska. Much of the permafrost disappeared after this last glaciation ended, some 15,000 ago. The warmer period of time continues to the present, and a very significant portion of the sediments have thawed and the carbon has been released into the atmosphere. We are working on understanding how much was released. There is still a significant amount of carbon sequestered in these types of sediments which have been sequestered for tens of thousands of years. If warming continues, it could be released into the atmosphere on the much shorter timescale.
CA-CP: What causes methane gas hydrates (or clathrates) to form? Is that all anaerobic decomposition or something else?
Dr. Romanovsky: Most of the methane is from natural gas from deeper soils in earth – from the same source that oil comes from. Some of the methane could be biogenic methane but it’s a smaller amount. Most of the methane is stored in clathrates. What is a clathrate? It looks like ice. It forms at certain temperature and pressure conditions when you have mix of water and gas and in this case we are talking about methane. It could be carbon dioxide clathrates. All gases can form clathrates. Methane clathrates formed when the gas was present in sediments, buried, and the temperatures went down and pressure rose. Clathrates are a very effective storage mechanism for the methane.
CA-CP: Is it evenly distributed around the areas that have permafrost or are there stronger pockets than others?
Dr. Romanovsky: This is mostly related to the sources of gas and all of these gas and oil provinces in the north have clathrates. There is a strong correlation with petrochemical fields because the source of clathrates is from these fields. But if you look in the north it’s everywhere – Alaska, northwest Canada, Norway, Barents, Kara and Laptev Seas, and East Siberian Sea – because all are oil and gas provinces.
CA-CP: There has been recent discussion and study of sub-sea permafrost degradation and of how methane is getting into water columns. Can you explain what is happening?
Dr. Romanovsky: First of all there is a huge need to study this. We have limited data available. What we know based on several scientific projects – some from Canada and Alaska – is that there is a huge amount of methane sequestered in hydrates. We also did some modeling that showed the possibility of release of methane from hydrates, in relation to long-term changes in climate like inter-glacial cycles, one of which we are experiencing right now. What we know now is that during glacial periods, formation of permafrost on the arctic shelf served to block free gas supplied from subsurface gas and oil areas. The permafrost was forming – it was impenetrable and thick, and in these favorable conditions, gas and water turn into hydrates. When the last glacial cycle turned into the interglacial, all the Arctic shelves were covered with sea water. The temperature at the bottom of the sea on these shelves that had been –15 °C to –25 °C, during the last glacial period (50,000 years ago) increased to –1.8 °C or warmer. The permafrost started to thaw from both sides – from the top down because of the chemistry of salty water, and from the bottom up as the thermal process also affected hydrates as well. The question is, if hydrates decomposed at – say 500 meters – under permafrost still there, will the gas reach the surface of the earth (bottom of ocean) and, if so, will it be released in the water and then into the atmosphere? This has to be further researched, but there is some evidence that permafrost is thawing from both sides, and there are some methane concentrations in the sea water which exceed by one or two orders of magnitude the equilibrium concentration of methane that we would expect in sea water. This means that there is some source, and we see these methane increases not only at the bottom sea water but at the sea surface. It means there is some methane coming into the water and going through the water and probably being released into the atmosphere. It is expensive to do this research, but several expeditions have studied this phenomenon. Given that permafrost on the shelf is warming now at least –2 °C or warmer, and given the history of sediments (marine sediments for some period of time, then terrestrial sediment for another period of time, then again marine sediments because of the glacier/inter-glacial cycles in the hundreds of thousands of years), there could be no ice in the marine salty sediments. Thus, there could be no problems for gas to go through this warm permafrost already thawing, through the tens to hundreds of meters of permafrost, if these pathways continue all the way to the ground surface.
CA-CP: Can some of it be released through thermokarst lakes?
Dr. Romanovsky: Yes. We were talking about the sub-sea. Thermkarst is a process that happens on land and its one of the modes of thawing of permafrost.
CA-CP: - Once a thermokarst lake forms, why is it that you get accelerated thaw below it?
Dr. Romanovsky: Imagine the surface of tundra which is flat, snow blowing during winter, not too much snow on the surface, and air temp still cold at –12 °C or –10 °C annual average. The summer thaw will be only a half a meter deep. For some reason there is a disturbance, with a warming climate, summers get warmer, you get a little bit deeper thaw during summertime. With an increase in summer thaw, the upper part of the permafrost, which is 70–80% ice, starts to thaw and develop a depression on the ground surface with standing water – at first just 5 cm on the surface, then 10 cm. When you start to get 20 cm, it’s already a pretty good depth in a flat surface of tundra. Soon you could have half a meter of this depression, which may be several meters or tens of meters across. In tundra, generally there is lots of water because evaporation is low. So then, you start to collect water in this depression. The water on the surface during summer time is an effective way to absorb solar radiation. So albedo and penetration of solar radiation through the water increases the absorption of solar energy in the lakes.
CA-CP: So it’s a summer warming effect that forms the thermokarst?
Dr. Romanovsky: Right. There’s a summer warming that started this, and as it continues and gets warmer, more ice melts until eventually lakes can be 3–4 meters deep. And in this case, permafrost will be continuously thawing because during the wintertime only two meters of ice will form on the lake and another meter or two below will be just water – so the bottom of the lake will always be above 0 °C, and permafrost will be continuously thawing.
CA-CP: How has modeling of the release of permafrost carbon into the atmosphere, and the potential positive feedback mechanisms progressed? Have the main GCM models incorporated permafrost carbon? Has the IPCC?
Dr. Romanovsky: The processes weren’t included in the IPCC. But there are several groups working on this right now. I am working with two of them – one in Colorado, and another in Potsdam, Germany. They are trying to incorporate the effect of thawing permafrost and the effect of the possible release of carbon. We want to include this in a model and let it run to see how much carbon will be released into the atmosphere. It’s a difficult task because we are adding several components that weren’t in GCM models before like permafrost dynamics and the sequestration and release of carbon. To include this is a significant improvement. But it is difficult to do the biological components of models and to put it together to couple them. It is a really big task, and I don’t know when it will be completed.
CA-CP: We understand that you work in several areas such as hydrology, ecosystem, and vegetation. In these areas and from all of your work, what impacts of permafrost thawing have you been observing in Alaska?
Dr. Romanovsky: In terms of hydrology, it’s a combination of factors. We already see it. Thawing permafrost will affect hydrology and lower lying areas. The thawing of permafrost is already creating different soil moisture conditions – more bogs growing, more wetlands in some areas, while the well-drained areas are drying. There have been studies on the stress on tree vegetation in Alaska due to this drying. This could be related to changes in permafrost – a lower water level creating drier conditions could lead to losing forests to grasslands. This is actually happening in Mongolia. On my trip, it was amazing to see that in some areas where marginal permafrost exists, the large trees grow only where permafrost exists. Where it does not, it is too dry for trees. The changing permafrost is already affecting infrastructure. This is complicated because most engineering structures built on permafrost have a significant effect on it. In general, with warming climate, permafrost is getting warmer and more vulnerable. The stability found in colder permafrost will be lost in warmer permafrost. While there are not huge difficulties with the pipeline, they are constantly working to support the integrity of it, much more work than 20 years ago because it is much warmer. In many places, permafrost is disappearing from surrounding areas and only exists under the thermopiles – the design they used to maintain frozen ground. It is unclear how long they can maintain this stability.
CA-CP: – Are you aware of new ideas to slow the thawing of the permafrost? Technical or involving R&D?
Dr. Romanovsky: There could be local solutions – pure engineering to freeze, but they are all expensive. And these engineering solutions cannot be easily used for linear structures like roads, railroads, or runways for airports. So engineers are able to keep infrastructure safe, but it’s becoming more and more expensive. The general solution can be only to keep the status quo of climate by limiting emissions from human activities. It is difficult to control the natural release of gases from permafrost, so it is better to not let permafrost thaw.
CA-CP: The community that’s doing permafrost research seems small but a tight international group. As a whole, is the research being funded at a reasonable level? Are people able to make the progress they need to make?
Dr. Romanovsky: In different countries the situations are different – you’re right, it’s small but tight. We have good leaders, like Jerry Brown of the International Permafrost Association. Norway has good funding. The U.S. is actually getting much better. Ten to fifteen years ago it was hard to get funds. Now it is not ideal, but better. We are trying to sustain long-term observation projects that last 3–5 years. This is a long-term changing creature, and we need long-term data to understand what is going on.
CA-CP: What are the key technical challenges that the scientific community needs to address?
Dr. Romanovsky: We are still working with data points that are sparsely distributed over the permafrost area. It is a major challenge to find how best to interpolate and extrapolate data to the entire area of permafrost distribution. There is some possibility of remote sensing, but it is difficult. There is no direct way to measure permafrost from space.
CA-CP: What are the parameters of remote sensing?
Dr. Romanovsky: It is challenging because all of the information you can capture using remote sensing is from a shallow surface layer. But, the combination of remote sensing, ground measurements and numerical modeling can help. For example, it is possible to measure surface temperature but still not precisely – at least within a degree.
CA-CP: How does the warming of the ocean in general affect the rate of permafrost thaw?
Dr. Romanovsky: In many ways. Changes in sea ice cover are of course related to warming in water as well, and directly affect sub-sea permafrost making the rate of degradation much higher. It increases the temperature and probably water content in the atmosphere that goes over land. It creates a warmer summer and fall with increased precipitation. This will lead to warming in the permafrost and have a direct affect on sub-sea permafrost. Now temperatures in deep waters that were below 0 °C are sometimes above it. The water is not that deep, and the absence of summer sea ice makes mixing more effective.
Visit Dr. Romanovsky’s web pages at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and the Geophysical Institute Permafrost Laboratory (GIPL)
Learn more about Dr. Romanovsky’s work by viewing his presentation on changes in permafrost and the carbon budget at the American Meteorological Society’s Environmental Science Seminar Series (ESSS). Learn more about thermokarsts here . Read Dr. Romanovsky’s essay on NOAA’s website.
Link to this interview: http://www.arcticwarming.net/node/70
Posts
9 comments:
This is a good interview and an important topic, but i think your summary is very misleading (tends to suggest a greater interest in the "wow" factor than in the science...)
He is saying we have a certain amount of time (50-70 years on the North Slope, less in areas to the south) before ongoing climate change (assuming we really understand what is going to happen) will pass a point where the temperature regime can no longer permanently sustain the permafrost condition. This is a natural consequence of any warming cycle (we are now post-glacial with climbing sea-levels for the past 80,000 years). However, for that temperature pulse to work its way downward through the full extent of the permafrost (in northern Alaska, this is up to 2,000 feet!) will take thousands to tens of thousands or more years in northern areas, less (again) to the south. You seem to be implying that the whole thing is going to spontaneously disintegrate en masse and tons of carbon will begin to pour out. Question is, is it accelerating and can it serve as part of a feedback loop (not accounted for in current models) that can lead to further acceleration? Answer is probably yes but data is poor. Anyway, the point is that its not catastrophic, it is still gradual
By they way...
"measuring temperature in the upper tenths to hundredths of meters?"
I hope that means tens to hundreds!! :)
Hi there, And Also.
I tend to put any of my own comments in a different color -- usually purple. The summary came with the interview.
I was very happy to find so much information in one place (although I found the graphic elsewhere and added it later).
I liked the explanations he gave. Sure, it will take a long time to melt most of it, but we hardly need come anywhere near that point in order to really screw things up.
I am not implying anything, I just cut and paste (usually).
However, he does seem to be saying that at the current rate of warming, we are in for a not very pretty positive feedback.
OK... Thank you!
So CA-CP is who? And it may actually be the UAF bunch, who tend to the flamboyant (http://www.uaf.edu/news/a_news/20071024130833.html) that are marketing this "tipping point" (TM) business. My point is, its a continual process of passing multiple "tipping points" depending on local conditions.
There's lots of missing permafrost all across Alaska and Canada and etc that passed it's tipping point long ago. What is important here is the process - does this process of permafrost melt and C release significantly alter climate? And are we modeling that correctly, and therefore making policy decisions based on the best info or not??
Dr. Romanovsky's detailed explanations go a long way toward explaining how some recently observed anomalous and significant increases in methane levels over the Russia portion of the Arctic Sea might have occurred.
Note that for the latter half of 2007, almost all major hurricane- and typhoon-forming systems north of the equator in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, respectively, were diverted northwards by oddly strong winds.
This resulted in warmer waters entering the Arctic Sea via the Bering Strait and to the east of Greenland, contributing significantly to the sea ice melt.
I would imagine that it would also contribute to warming the bottom layers of the sea, were sufficient mixing to occur over time. While such mixing has not been thought to occur due to the depth of the sea, it may well occur closer to shore, especially near the Russian side. If you look at the topography of that region, you can see that it appears to resemble a vast flood plain.
As far as I have been able to tell by my readings, the rapid rate of warming occurring in the Arctic, in the sea waters and in the tundra, cannot be explained by the natural process of coming out of the last ice age.
And, it is not necessary for this increase in temperature to melt all of the permafrost in order for disaster to occur. At the rate things are going, enough will melt to leave us with a big enough problem during this generation and foreseeable generations.
The CA-CP (Clean Air Cool Planet) is the organization that interviewed Dr. Romanovsky.
I am sure I do not know what you mean by " marketing this tipping point business."
It is more than abundantly clear that once the Arctic sea ice is mostly gone in the summertime that the Arctic sea waters will warm up (albedo effect), leading to more melting of tundra (Artic amplification), more melting of northern Greenland, and weakening of the polar vortex, leading to a northward movement of the jet stream which brings drought to the U.S. southwest.
All of this is already happening, and these are hardly "local" events as the entire Arctic region is being affected.
That tipping point done been and gone.
Exactly...
It seems you agree with me. His comments on various local threshholds at different locales in Alaska is very different from the global process that you describe. Its all very real, and its all very ripe for unnecessary sensationalism.
We have been passing a series of threshholds, some local, some more regional in extent for the past 10000 years. This was the point of my comment. Its tempting to say we are approaching THE KEY tipping point and in just a FEW SHORT YEARS, the world will CHANGE IMMENSELY AND FOREVER WITH NO GOING BACK!!! But its already happening...
I am not sure what you think we agree on.
Normally, climate change is an ongoing process that can take thousands of years to effect dramatic changes.
Nowadays, changes are occurring at a rate that is well outside geologic norms.
We need no longer talk of tipping points but rather of points of no return.
Have we gone over the edge? Only time will tell.
Can we reduce our chances of going permanently over the edge by drawing down atmospheric CO2 levels?
If we don't try to do this, we are toast.
If we do try, we may still be toast.
But, I have a dearly beloved daughter, so I believe that we must try.
Paragraph 1: the slant of the summary that prompted my first comment was that some seminal threshold was ABOUT to be crossed. I disagreed. He was talking about several different, region-specific threshholds. I said its an ongoing process and already happening. I took your comments to suggest you agreed. You seem to assume I disagree with the urgency here. I do not. Absolutely not. I do disagree with attempts to persuade others to believe that by taking some comments about permafrost at specific locations in Alaska and implying that their "tipping" point equated with some global tipping point.
P-2: Sorry, but not true.
Younger Dryas - 12,000 years ago. 5-7 C warming in just about a decade. Generally attributed to cessation of thermohaline ocean circulation. As we go back in time, there were very likely many other similar events but as we go back, our ability to date events with precision rapidly deteriorates.
P-3: I don't think we know what overall geologic "norms" for temporal phenomena are due primarily to the issue above...
I agree with everything else you say.
I am constantly scanning the academic journal abstracts for the latest bits and pieces of this puzzle, and the thing that gets me lately is that there just is no good news.
Obviously it is an ongoing process that began some time ago and is not about to stop.
But, I am not going to admit that to myself right now.
Post a Comment