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Methane vent hole in the ice? In October 2015, an area appeared in the Arctic sea ice where the temperature of the ice was a few degrees Celsius higher and where ice concentration and salinity levels were substantially lower than the surrounding ice. The image below pictures the situation on October 11, 2015. [ click on image to enlarge ] Could this have been an iceberg? If so, ice concentration should have been higher, rather than lower. More likely is that this is a vent hole with methane rising through cracks in the sea ice. Malcolm Light comments : " The whole of the Arctic seabed is covered with methane hydrates and NASA satellites should have long ago defined where the major plumes were coming out. It is clearly a surface methane vent hole in the ocean ice analogous to the large methane vent holes that appeared all over northern Siberia this year. It means we have overheated the Arctic seafloor to the extent where the methane hydrates are now unstable and we could have furth...

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Growth Seals Off Arctic Ocean Arctic sea ice increased rapidly in October 2015, after reaching its annual minimum in September. As the image below shows, the growing sea ice extent has effectively sealed off the Arctic Ocean from the atmosphere, resulting in less evaporation and heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. The Naval Research Laboratory 30-days animation (up to October 22, with forecast added up to October 30) on the right shows that sea ice has grown in extent, adding plenty of very thin sea ice, while the existing ice has hardly increased its thickness. The Buffer Has Gone Thick sea ice used to extend meters below the sea surface in the Arctic, where it could consume massive amounts of ocean heat through melting this ice into water. As such, thick sea ice acted as a buffer. Over the years, Arctic sea ice thickness has declined most dramatically. This means that the buffer that used to consume massive amounts of ocean heat carried by sea curren...

As you know the weather is starting to change rapidly for the worse now and I have been working on Arctic methane induced global warming for about 14 years. There are massive deposits of methane gas trapped in the undersea permafrosts in Russian waters and onland in Siberia as well and if the global warming boils of just 10% of what is there, there is enough to cause a Permian style extinction event that humanity will not survive. Some brilliant work on the Arctic methane threat has been done by a Russian scientist Natalia Shakhova and others who indicate that we are in a very perilous position, if we don't find a way of reducing the atmospheric methane and depressurizing the undersea methane to stop the massive methane eruptions there. I and some other workers have designed a radio-laser Atmospheric methane destruction system based on the early Russian radio-wave induced conversion of methane to nano-diamonds. This radio-laser system can be installed on nuclear powered boats such ...

Arctic sea ice extent has been growing rapidly recently. The image below shows extent up to October 9, 2015 (marked by red dot). Below is a comparison of sea ice thickness as on October 6, for the years (from left to right) 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The comparison shows that decline has been strongest where sea ice used to be the thickest, i.e. over 3 meters thick. One of the reasons why the thickest Arctic sea ice has declined so dramatically over the years is the rising ocean heat that is melting the sea ice from underneath. The image below illustrates the situation on October 5, 2015, when sea surface temperature anomalies were as high as 6.4°C, 7.4°C and 7.3°C (11.5°F 13.2°F and 13.1°F) off the North American coast, and as high as 9.4°C (16.8°F) near Svalbard. Water temperatures are very high in the Arctic, as further illustrated by the image below showing Arctic sea surface temperature anomalies as at October 9, 2015. Rising ocean heat is further illustrated by the graph below, ...

As the 2015 El Niño gets stronger, the Northern Hemisphere continues to get hit by strong winds and cyclones. The image below shows strong winds over the Arctic Ocean, as hurricane Joaquin approaches the coast of North America. On above image, hurricane Joaquin is clocked at a speed of 79 mph (127 km/h) on October 1, 2015. NOAA warned that on that day the maximum sustained wind speed had increased to near 120 mph (195 km/h) with higher gusts. For reference, NOAA uses four categories: D: Tropical Depression – wind speed less than 39 mph (63 km/h) S: Tropical Storm – wind speed between 39 mph and 73 mph (63 km/h - 118 km/h) H: Hurricane – wind speed between 74 mph and 110 mph (118 km/h - 177 km/h) M: Major Hurricane – wind speed greater than 110 mph (over 177 km/h) NOAA issued the image below on September 30, 2015, warning that Hurricane Joaquin is likely to cause wind damage across a large part of the eastern coast of North America. The NOAA animation below gives an idea of the s...