This is a warning to the world borne out of many decades of research.
-Peter Wadhams
As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts at an unprecedented rate, hitting a record low last summer, the thawing of offshore ‘permafrost’ - frozen soil - in the region is releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Scientists have previously warned that there are vast reservoirs of methane in the Arctic, hundreds of billions of tonnes of a gas many times worse than carbon dioxide for global warming - of which only a fraction needs releasing into the atmosphere to trigger possibly catastrophic climate change.
Now, researchers from Cambridge and Rotterdam have for the first time calculated the potential economic impact of a scenario some scientists consider increasingly likely: that the methane below the East Siberian Sea will be emitted, either steadily over the next 30 years or in one giant “burp”.
Writing in the journal Nature, the academics say that just this area’s methane alone - some 50 billion tonnes, or 50 gigatonnes - would have a mean global impact of 60 trillion dollars, an amount very similar to the size of the entire global economy last year. Current US national debt stands at a mere 16 trillion dollars in comparison.
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This news story about the potential cost of Arctic methane release provoked widespread coverage, including a critique in the Washington Post. Professor Peter Wadhams responds to some of the comments that were made: A response to Methane Mischief: Misleading Commentary Published In Nature
Image: Methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from the Arctic could cost the world 60 trillion dollars.
Credit: University of Cambridge
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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