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Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia’s northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

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- None of this is new.  But, it is getting closer.

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- Not the first time I’ve written on this and I doubt it will be the last.

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A senior US Coast Guard commander has warned of the risk of conflict in the Arctic, unless disputes over international borders are resolved.

Speaking to the BBC during an Arctic patrol flight, Rear Adm Gene Brooks, in charge of the Coast Guard’s vast Alaska region, appealed for a diplomatic deal.

“The potential is there with undetermined boundaries and great wealth for conflict, or competition.

“There’s always a risk of conflict,” Adm Brookes said.

He added that this was especially the case “where you do not have established, delineated, agreed-upon borders”.

Russia is staking the largest claim to the Arctic, after planting a flag at the North Pole last summer, but Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States are all involved in border disputes as well.

The admiral’s warning comes as the Arctic sea-ice has, for a second year running, retreated far more dramatically than the long-term average. The latest satellite analysis shows this year’s melt closely following last year’s record thaw.

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New Zealand’s glaciers are showing the lowest total ice mass on record with more than twice the volume of Rangitoto Island melting away in a year.

Research released yesterday by the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research showed the Southern Alps glaciers had lost over 2.5cu km (2.2 billion tonnes) of permanent ice from April 2007 to March this year.

That is the fourth highest annual loss since monitoring started, leaving the glaciers with the lowest total ice mass on record of just 44.9cu km.

Niwa principal scientist Jim Salinger told the Herald that was an 18 per cent loss since 1976 when 54cu km was recorded.

The 2.2 billion tonnes loss from last year to the end of March was “very significant”, he said.

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Failure to take urgent action to curb climate change is effectively violating the human rights of people in the poorest nations, an aid charity warns.

A report by Oxfam International says emissions, primarily from developed countries, are exacerbating flooding, droughts and extreme weather events.

As a result, harvests are failing and people are losing their homes and access to water, the authors observe.

They say human rights need to be at the heart of global climate policies.

Oxfam will be submitting its report, called Climate Wrongs and Human Rights, to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Righting wrongs

“Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one,” explained report author Kate Raworth. “Now it is becoming a matter of international justice.

The global impacts of climate change meant that nations had to be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, Ms Raworth said.

“Litigation is seldom the best way to solve a dispute.

“That is why we need a strong UN deal in 2009 to cut emissions and support adaption,” she added, referring to next year’s key UN climate summit where a future global climate strategy is expected to be agreed.

“However, vulnerable countries do need options to protect themselves. Rich country polluters have been fully aware of their culpability for many years.”

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British scientists say they have drawn up the first detailed map to show areas in the Arctic that could become embroiled in future border disputes.

A team from Durham University compiled the outline of potential hotspots by basing the design on historical and ongoing arguments over ownership.

Russian scientists caused outrage last year when they planted their national flag on the seabed at the North Pole.

The UK researchers hope the map will inform politicians and policy makers.

“Its primary purpose is to inform discussions and debates because, frankly, there has been a lot of rubbish about who can claim (sovereignty) over what,” explained Martin Pratt, director of the university’s International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU).

“To be honest, most of the other maps that I have seen in the media have been very simple,” he added.

“We have attempted to show all known claims; agreed boundaries and one thing that has not appeared on any other maps, which is the number of areas that could be claimed by Canada, Denmark and the US.”

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Huge ice fields in western China’s Tian Mountains are diminishing because of global warming. Jonathan Watts went to Urumqi No1 to see how the local people are being affected.

Up close, the sound of global warming at the face of the Urumqi No1 Glacier is a simple, steady drip, drip, drip. Just 30 metres from the main wall, the flood of meltwater becomes so powerful that it cuts a tunnel under the floor of grey ice, leaving only a blotchy, wafer-thin crust on the surface. [See Guardian video here.]

Compared with the collapse of ice shelves in the Antarctic, the melting of the mountains in China’s far west is one of the less spectacular phenomena of global warming, but it is a more immediate cause of concern and hope.

There is concern because this glacier — more than almost any other in China — is a natural water regulator for millions of people downstream in the far western region of Xinjiang. In winter, it stores up snow and ice. In summer, it releases meltwater to provide drinking and irrigation supplies to one of the country’s most arid regions. It brings hope because its rapid shrinkage is helping to set off climate-change alarm bells in a country that emits more greenhouse gases than any other.

The Urumqi No1 Glacier is so named because it was the first ice field to be measured in China. Since 1953, scientists have been monitoring its thickness and length, analysing traces of pollution and tracking changes in temperature at this 3,800-metre altitude. The results leave no room for doubt that this part of the Tian (Heaven) mountain range is melting.

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In the once-lush fields of South Australia, on land that borders the state’s world famous Lower Lakes, farmer Nigel Treloar rounds up the herd with the help of his off-road motorbike.

It is one of the few things that has got easier as a result of Australia’s worst drought in 100 years.

That is because he used to have 800 cows and now he only milks 250. There is not enough irrigation water from the nearby lakes to sustain a bigger herd.

Nigel took me to nearby Lake Albert, to what used to be a vast expanse of water. But now its waters have receded and much of it resembles a moonscape.

The pump and pipeline that once irrigated his land now lie in the open-air rather than underwater. He has been chasing the retreating water and has been losing the race.

“We’d be up to our waist in water here and it would be navigable,” Nigel told me, after we had walked out 100 metres from what used to be the shoreline.

“You could come out here with boats. All the fishermen would be up and down with their fishing gear and pulling in the catch.”

“But this is the middle of winter and it looks like a desert.”

There are puddles of water but they are brown-tinged and unwelcoming. The cows will not drink it. So high is the salt content that it stings and burns their mouths.

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Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the country is suffering badly from the impact of climate change and that the Sahara is slowly creeping north - into the Spanish mainland.

Yet in Spain itself there is little consensus about what is to be done. Indeed, such is the disagreement that journalists and politicians alike are calling it “water wars”.

A farmer and politician, Angel Carcia Udon, said: “Water arouses passions because it can be used as a weapon, a political weapon, just as oil is a political weapon.”

And water in Spain has set region against region, north against south and government against opposition.

When the city of Barcelona nearly ran out of water earlier this year, the fountains were switched off and severe restrictions were introduced.

The government of Catalonia pleaded for water to be transferred from rivers like the Ebro - causing a furious row between the regions.

Instead, the city shipped in millions of litres of water from France and accelerated work on the giant desalination plant on the edge of Barcelona, which promises to provide 180,000 cubic metres of water a day.

Parched land

But Barcelona is not alone in its insatiable thirst. Apart from the far north, the entire country is suffering, especially the parched areas on the Mediterranean coast, from Catalonia, down through Valencia, Alicante, Murcia and Almeria.

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New estimates show that frozen Arctic soil contains far more potential greenhouse gas than previously recognized–and could speed climate change as it melts

“Drunken” trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes—all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains—a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change.

Now new research published in Nature Geoscience shows that such frozen Arctic soil holds nearly twice as much of the organic material that gives rise to planet-warming greenhouse gases as previously estimated.

“When the air temperature rises two to three degrees, the Arctic tundra would switch from a carbon sink to a carbon source,” says soil scientist Chien-Lu Ping of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “The greater the carbon stores, the greater the impact it causes,” including even faster warming in the already changing Arctic.

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- It’s not like we didn’t know.  Consider this: 

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Ten per cent of New Zealanders believe it is too late to do anything about climate change, a new survey reveals.

The figure has alarmed campaigners trying to spread the message that everyone can do their bit for the environment.

Paul McElwain, strategy director of advertising company Publicis Mojo, presented the results of the online survey to a conference in Auckland yesterday.

The poll of more than 4000 household shoppers showed hundreds thought it was too late to act on climate change. One in 10 New Zealanders and about two in 10 Australians thought time had run out.

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