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Arctic methane release is an 'economic time bomb' - study Arctic thawing could cost the world $60tn, scientists say
(about 20 hours later)
The release of a giant methane pulse from thawing Arctic permafrost could destabilise the climate system and trigger huge costs to the global economy within coming decades, warns a forthcoming paper in the journal Nature. Rapid thawing of the Arctic could trigger a catastrophic "economic timebomb" which would cost trillions of dollars and undermine the global financial system, say a group of economists and polar scientists.
The paper highlights the link between the "unprecedented rate" of melting of Arctic sea ice, and the intensifying methane emissions from thawing offshore permafrost. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) alone carries a 50 Gigatonne (Gt) reservoir of methane gas hydrates which could be released slowly over 50 years or "catastrophically fast" in a matter of decades under the current pace of global warming. Governments and industry have expected the widespread warming of the Arctic region in the past 20 years to be an economic boon, allowing the exploitation of new gas and oilfields and enabling shipping to travel faster between Europe and Asia. But the release of a single giant "pulse" of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost beneath the East Siberian sea "could come with a $60tn [£39tn] global price tag", according to the researchers who have for the first time quantified the effects on the global economy.
The increasing release of methane coupled with the loss of Arctic sea ice would create an amplifying feedback "speeding up sea-ice retreat, reducing the reflection of solar energy and hastening sea-level rise as the Greenland ice sheet melt accelerates." Recent research on 'Arctic amplification' has demonstrated a complex relationship between the earth system and the Arctic. The accelerating melt process is already altering the jet stream which seems to be multiplying and accentuating extreme weather events. Even the slow emission of a much smaller proportion of the vast quantities of methane locked up in the Arctic permafrost and offshore waters could trigger catastrophic climate change and "steep" economic losses, they say.
As I wrote in May: The Arctic sea ice, which largely melts and reforms each year, is declining at an unprecedented rate. In 2012, it collapsed to under 3.5m sqkm by mid September, just 40% of its usual extent in the 1970s. Because the ice is also losing its thickness, some scientists expect the Arctic ocean to be largely free of summer ice by 2020.
"Extreme weather events over the last few years apparently driven by the accelerating Arctic melt process - including unprecedented heatwaves and droughts in the US and Russia, along with snowstorms and cold weather in northern Europe – have undermined harvests, dramatically impacting global food production and contributing to civil unrest." The growing fear is that as the ice retreats, the warming of the sea water will allow offshore permafrost to release ever greater quantities of methane. A giant reservoir of the greenhouse gas, in the form of gas hydrates on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), could be emitted, either slowly over 50 years or catastrophically fast over a shorter time frame, say the researchers.
The authors of the Nature article, modelling the potential consequences of the 50 Gt East Siberian methane release over different time periods, conclude that it "will bring forward by 15–35 years the date at which the global mean temperature rise exceeds 2C above pre-industrial levels" - the 'safe limit' accepted by policymakers (though its safety has been disputed by leading scientists). The ramifications of vanishing ice will also be felt far from the poles, they say because the region is pivotal to the functioning of Earth systems, such as oceans and climate. "The imminent disappearance of the summer sea ice in the Arctic will have enormous implications for both the acceleration of climate change, and the release of methane from off-shore waters which are now able to warm up in the summer," said Prof Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar ocean physics group at Cambridge University and one of the authors of the paper published in the journal Nature.
Under a business as usual scenario, this will generate an "extra $60 trillion (net present value) of mean climate change impacts" - nearly the same value as the entire GDP of the global economy. The lower emissions scenario (which unfortunately looks far less plausible at the moment) would "be an extra $37 trillion" - still over half of world GDP. "This massive methane boost will have major implications for global economies and societies. Much of those costs would be borne by developing countries in the form of extreme weather, flooding and impacts on health and agricultural production," he said.
Two of the Nature authors are leading business school scholars - Prof Gail Whiteman at the Department of Business-Society Management, Erasmus University, and Dr Chris Hope at the Judge Business School, Cambridge University. The third author is Prof Peter Wadhams, Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge. According to the authors, who using the Stern review, calculated that 80% of the extra impacts by value will occur in the poorer economies of Africa, Asia and South America. "Inundation of low-lying areas, extreme heat stress, droughts and storms are all magnified by the extra methane emissions," they authors write. They argue that global economic bodies have not taken into account the risks of rapid ice melt and that the only economic downside to the warming of the Arctic they have identified so far has been the possible risk of oil spills.
They point out that 80% of climate change impacts will hit poorer, less developed countries through "inundation of low-lying areas, extreme heat stress, droughts and storms", all of which will be "magnified by the extra methane emissions." But they also emphasise that their analysis only focuses on potential impacts from "one feedback" involving methane release from the ESAS, and is therefore probably "conservative" - implying actual costs could be much higher. They warn of an urgent need to: But, they say, economists are missing the big picture. "Neither the World Economic Forum nor the International Monetary Fund currently recognise the economic danger of Arctic change. [They must] pay much more attention to this invisible time-bomb. The impacts of just one [giant "pulse" of methane] approaches the $70-tn value of the world economy in 2012", said Prof Gail Whiteman, at the Rotterdam School of Management and another author.
"... re-direct economic attention from short-term economic gains from shipping and extraction to what appears to be an economic time-bomb... The costs of Arctic change carry significant – yet thus far invisible – risks to our global economic foundations." The Nature report comes as global shipping companies prepare to send a record number of vessels across the north of Russia later in 2013, slashing miles travelled between Asia and Europe by over 35% and cutting costs up to 40%.
The authors urge the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund, and other financial institutions to embark on new research accounting for such dramatic costs of Arctic climate change, which so far have been insufficiently recognised. According to Russian authorities, 218 ships from Korea, China, Japan, Norway, Germany and elsewhere have so far applied for permission to follow the "Northern sea route" (NSR) this year. This route uses the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska and is only open for a few months each year with an icebreaker.
Current models do not incorporate amplifying feedbacks such as "linking the extent of Arctic ice to increases in Arctic mean temperature, global sea level rise and ocean acidification"; nor do they include critical "feedback loops", such as "the effects of black carbon deposits from forest and agricultural fires, diesel use and industrial activity on snow and ice reflectivity and melting", as well as links between Arctic sea ice extent, global sea level rise, increased shipping and the increase in Arctic local temperatures. Without analysing these factors, "world leaders and economists will continue to miss the big picture." But following 2012's record collapse of the Arctic sea ice, shipping companies are gaining confidence to use the route. In 2012, only 46 ships sailed its entire length from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans and in 2011 only four. The route can save even medium-sized bulk carrier 10-15 days and hundreds of tonnes of bunker fuel on a journey between northern Norway and China.
The extent to which the majority of climate models have underplayed the scale of the challenge in the Arctic is evident from a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which projects that the Arctic will be ice free in September by around 2054-58. The projection departs significantly, however, from actual empirical observations of the rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice which is heading for disappearance within three years according to Nature co-author and renowned sea ice expert Prof Wadhams. Satellite data collated from the US National snow and ice data centre in Boulder, Colorado this week showed ice loss now accelerating and, at 8.2m sqkm (3.2m square miles) approaching the same extent as during last year's record melt. Over 130,000 sqkm of sea ice melted between July 1 and 15. "Compared to the 1981 to 2010 average, ice extent on July 15 was 1.06m sqkm (409,000 square miles) below average," said a spokesman.
NASA airborne surveillance in the Arctic has already encountered large "plumes of methane" as much as 150 kilometres wide. While no one knows for sure how and when a significant methane release might occur, recent evidence shows that once the Arctic summer sea ice disappears the chances of breaching a tipping point in methane release from melting permafrost are far higher. • This article was amended on 24 July 2013 because an earlier version of the article said the Arctic sea ice "collapsed to under 3.5m sqkm by mid September" in 2013. This has been corrected to say 2012.
New research led by Dr Anton Vaks of Oxford University reconstructing the history of Siberian permafrost shows that continuous melting sufficient to release significant quantities of methane would begin at around 1.5C, a temperature rise to which the world is already committed early this century.
Underscoring the urgency of mitigation efforts, the Nature paper warns that it would be:
"... difficult, perhaps impossible, to avoid large methane releases in the East Siberian Sea without significant reductions in global emissions of CO2, since it is seabed warming, a product of summer sea ice retreat, which directly drives the methane release."
If Prof Wadhams is correct in his forecast that the summer sea ice will be gone by 2016, then we could be closer to the tipping point than we realise.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed