In every out-thrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth. Rachel Carson
I’ve always wanted to see Abraham Lake in the winter. I’ve always wanted to see the methane bubbles in its waters.
This week in history saw the birth of Earth Day in 1970. The trend to think in such terms as a global environment was all begun by a fore-mother, the one and only Rachel Carson, whose book became a clarion call for the movement.
The oceans are heating up. The Pacific’s warming waters flows up to Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait. On the other side, the Gulf Stream is heating up, specifically, due to pollution clouds flowing off North America. In 2007 the Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level. It lost twenty percent of its summer coverage from the year before. The sea ice has failed to recover to its 1979-2001
average and in 2011, diminished sea ice reached its second lowest record.
Sea ice acts as the Earth’s built-in air conditioner. Because of its light color, Arctic sea ice reflects most of the sunlight reaching it back into space. In contrast, dark ocean water absorbs most of the sunlight. As sea ice continues melting, the increased exposure of ocean water changes the Earth’s albedo—the fraction of sunlight reflected away from the planet. This change in albedo can cause further warming, leading to continued sea ice melt and reinforcing the melting cycle. As summer melt continues to increase, wintertime recovery becomes more difficult to achieve. According to Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at NSIDC, Arctic sea ice could melt completely as early as 2030.
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder.
Heat trapping pollution emissions have led to temperature increases which in turn have led to rapid land ice melt in both poles. While that is happening, there is another reaction occurring as well. The warming trend is slowly freeing the once huge tracts of frozen methane in the Arctic. Methane is a potent game changer.
When the top of the world began freezing around 10 million years ago, it also froze the bodies of dead plants and animals in accumulation. These remnants have been frozen and locked in formations called methane hydrates. There are no methane hydrates in the deepest oceans. These form on the shallow seas and continental slopes.
Apparently, global mean methane levels as high as 1840 parts per billion were recorded on August 4th, 2015. That is the highest recorded and there is expectation that it will be superseded.
Of late, methane has become the new monster in the Arctic, and justifiably so.
Many northern lakes are not any different when viewed, than many other lakes in the high plateaus of the inner west in that they too are turquoise colored lakes, dotted out among the high valleys, surrounded by huge mountains. Or they are dotted out over the tundra in the high northern latitudes. The difference is that many of these bodies of water are significant sources, currently, of methane and are likely to emit more in the future. Particularly if warming climate means longer ice-free seasons and thawing of the permafrost. There is the potential of increasing emissions which in turn would generate a positive feedback.
Some fear that the process appears to have started already.
Under the cover of ice and freeze in these lakes and ponds, lies a thick layer of carbon from accumulated dead organic matter. These have long been locked up in the freeze. But as it de-freezes and the rotting takes over, it releases gasses. Researchers have been studying these lakes since 2000. Now, some of these ice covered lakes are exhibiting:
{…} huge open area in the lake that looked like it was boiling.
“We saw a huge open area in the lake that looked like it was boiling.” Walter Anthony and her team were visiting lakes to measure methane bubbling up. But the roiling seep looked like none other she had seen. Link.
In order to understand this kind of boiling plume of methane, the researches flew around looking for lakes with open areas indicating methane seepage. They found that the seepage was present but the boiling plume was only in some areas.
These plumes and open spaces are flammable.
The permafrost is like a thick lid on a pan of boiling water. It seals of the geologic layers and porous pathways with ice. While there is gas under the thick permafrosted top coat – a lid, the gas cannot escape through it because it is impermeable. In their research, they found the gas plumes were most likely in areas where the glaciers and ice were in retreat. In these areas, the permafrost was thawing and its abilities as a lid was disintegrating:
“And in the same way you pull back this cryosphere cap, it lets the methane out in a poof, over probably a century to thousands of years.” On a human scale, that poof of methane means large amounts of carbon added to an already warming atmosphere. “The lakes are much bigger emitters than we thought before, now that we have come to understand how much methane is actually bubbling out of the lakes,” Walter Anthony said. “In the future we don’t know what will happen. It is a bit of a wild card.”
Not all methane flow out in a plume. In some of these northern frozen lakes methane forms a very picturesque floating white blob.These blobs begin to stack up under each other, waiting for the Spring thaw to escape into the air. One such lake that is in a lower latitude than those lakes described above is Abraham Lake, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Even though it is man-made, its water has the vivid blue look of a glacial lake. Leaves, plant matter and other dead organic matter sinks to the bottom of the lake. There it feeds the bacteria which lives on these things and it excretes methane. These turn into white frozen blobs as it comes in contact with frozen water.
This picturesque lake freezes but is generally not covered in snow because of wind blows it off the
surface. The ice on the surface can achieve a thickness of more than two feet. The darkness of the lake bottom can be seen through the frozen, glassy surface while standing on it. People have even reported hearing cracking and deep boomy noises while standing on the surface of lake Abraham.
These blobs also, can be excavated and pierced and lit on fire.