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Australia: The Land Where Time Began |
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Arctic Methane Release – Global Impact
A release of 50 Gt of methane over 10 years was modelled by Wadhams,
together with Gail Whitman and Chris Hope, both in terms of temperature
and cost (Whiteman, Hope & Wadhams, 2013). Though this is a huge
quantity of gas, that is seemingly impossible to let loose on the world.
The total annual release of CO2 is 35 Gt; it is less than 10
% of the total volume of methane believed to be locked up in the East
Siberian Sea sediments. They used the PAGE09 integrated assessment
model, to quantify the effects of a major pulse of Arctic methane on the
global economy, as it allows the extra emissions to be traced through
sea level changes, regional temperatures, and regional and global
impacts, such as flooding, health and extreme weather, as well as taking
account of uncertainty (Hope, 2013). PAGE09 calculates the amount by
which the Net Present Value (NPV) of impacts, which is aggregated
between the present and 2200, increases for 1 more tonne of CO2
that is emitted, Which Wadhams says is effectively the social cost of CO2.
PAGE09 is the most recent version of the model PAGE, Which had been
developed by Chris Hope at the Judge Institute in Cambridge and was used
by the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change to calculate the
impacts of climate change (Stern, 2006). All of these results are based
on 10,000 runs of the model, which allows for a full picture of the
risks to be built up in order to work out the uncertainties.
Wadhams et al. tested 2
standard emission scenarios. For the ‘business as usual’ scenario it was
assumed the world carries on along its present course releasing
increasing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases year
after year with no mitigating actions. For the ‘low emissions’ case,
with a 50 % chance of keeping the rise of the global mean temperature to
less than 2oC (the ‘2016r5low’ scenario from the UK
Meteorological Office), was run. With both cases releasing a decade-long
pulse of 50 Gt of methane to the atmosphere between 2015 and 2025. The
impacts of later, longer lasting or smaller pulses of methane were also
explored.
The extra rise in temperature by 2040 resulting from the methane was 0.6oC,
which is a substantial extra contribution. Wadhams says this would be
catastrophic, in part as it is so rapid. All other global warming
effects would increase in speed as a result and nothing could be done to
shut off the methane short of cooling the water column to bring back the
ice, which is very difficult to imagine how this could be achieved. The
time at which the global mean temperature increase exceeded 2oC
above pre-industrial levels would be brought forward by between 15 and
35 years to 2035 for the ‘business as usual’ scenario or 2040 for the
low emissions scenario. Note how rapidly the climatic effect is
generated by the methane, because a rise of 0.3-0.4oC occurs
within a few years, though the peak of 0.6oC is reached 25
years after the beginning of the emissions.
The cost of this increase totals 60 trillion dollars over a century for
the business as usual scenario, measured at present values. Wadhams says
they had anticipated the cost of changes to the Arctic would be steep,
in spite of economic gains in the short term for Arctic nations and some
industries, though didn’t expect the magnitude of the cost they
discovered. The amount is 15 % of the total of $400 trillion that has
been estimated for all climate change impacts around the world over the
same period, estimated by the same model. There will still be a cost of
an extra $37 trillion for the low emissions scenario. Whether or not the
pulse of methane is delayed by up to 20 years, only kicking in at 2035
instead of 2015, the costs are the same, or stretched out over 2 or 3
decades instead of 1 decade. There is almost exactly half the impact of
a 50 Gt pulse of methane for a 25 Gt of methane. In order to model where
change would result the model divides the Earth into 8 regions. The
global distribution of the extra impacts closely mirrors the total
impacts of climate change: with 80 % of the extra impacts by value in
the poorer economies of Africa, Asia and South America. The extra
methane emissions magnify all the impacts such as inundation of
low-lying areas, extreme heat stress, droughts and storms. It has now
been found that what was believed to be a purely Arctic effect, by the
retreat of sea ice over Arctic shelves that was triggered by global
warming, has a global impact. As Wadhams says that as usual it is the
poor around the globe who will feel the effects of climate change the
most.
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Author: M.H.Monroe Email: admin@austhrutime.com Sources & Further reading |