De methaangas bom aan de ijsvrije noordpool tegen 2015
http://io9.com/5945658/what-the-hell...arctic-sea-ice
What the Hell is happening to the Arctic Sea Ice?
Similarly, Mark Drinkwater, the European Space Agency's senior advisor on polar regions and a mission scientist for the CryoStat satellite that measures arctic ice, believes that the Arctic could be ice free in September by the end of this decade.
When will the ice melt? While the range of possibilities is wide today, it's shrunk dramatically from just a few years ago, when most climate scientists expected the ice to survive through the 21st century. Now the question is whether it will be gone in decades – or in mere years.
The Arctic Methane Bomb
The final risk is the largest in the very long term, though the extent to which it will affect us in the coming years and decades is still a matter of great uncertainty.
The Arctic and the region immediately surrounding it are home to immense amounts of buried carbon. The permafrost of Siberia, Canada, and Alaska is estimated to hold around 1.7 trillion tons of carbon – mostly in the form of dead plant matter. The sea bed beneath the shallower parts of the Arctic Ocean holds anywhere up to another 10 trillion tons of carbon trapped in a semi-frozen state called methane hydrates.
By contrast, all human CO2 emissions over the last century amount to only 1.1 trillion tons of carbon. The permafrost carbon, alone, could exceed the effect of all human burning of fossil fuels. The Arctic Sea bed deposits are close to ten times all carbon humans have released. What's worse is that much of that carbon will end up released as methane (CH4) instead of carbon dioxide (CO2).
A molecule of methane absorbs traps roughly a hundred times as much heat as a molecule of carbon dioxide. Fortunately, methane degrades quickly in the atmosphere, lasting on average for around 10 years before being converted into CO2, which can last for a hundred years or more. Even so, over the course of a century, a molecule of methane released today will have 25 to 30 times the heating impact of a molecule of CO2 released today.
If even 10% of the northern permafrost's buried carbon were released as methane, it would have a heating effect over the next decade equivalent to ten times all human greenhouse emissions to date, and over the next century equivalent to roughly four times all human greenhouse emissions to date.
And the permafrost is melting. In Fairbanks, Alaska, ground that's been frozen solid for 10,000 years is melting, opening up sink holes. In the town of Newtok, Alaska, the permafrost melt has been so bad that the residents recently voted to move the entire town rather than stay and watch it sink into the once frozen land.