Arctic in Flames

The hidden hazard exists in a carbon-enriched Arctic air mass, for polar air is a cul-de-sac, a dead region which mixes only very slowly with the rest of the global circulation. Carbon gases, CO2 and/or methane, could build to high concentrations in the Arctic Circle, as we watch helplessly the results of our industrial frenzy. Low-angle sunlight striking these carbon species inexorably warms the polar air, with weak beams of sunlight refracted through thick atmosphere. The carbon excess in the air gives a method for warming the polar region we had not witnessed before in nature, providing a target to intercept infrared which usually escapes unnoticed into space. Watching the rising curves of air carbon levels and temperature, it may be hard to distinguish cause from effect, for rising temperatures cause carbon release in these latitudes, as temperatures reflect carbon gas levels.

The normally very efficient black-sky radiation through the shorter air column at the pole, however, is now fogged at the long infrared wavelengths. Everything loses less heat into the night sky. The glow of the sun beneath the horizon never before delivered any heat to the North Pole, but now the sky has a color it never had before, a slightly hazy gray in the far infrared, could you see in that band, and now it gives a subtle, imperceptible warming. So when the sun finally shows in its season over the Pole, the air is already slightly warmer than in times past, and the crisp white lands feel an early thaw. The living things sprout and arise with extra vigor, an unaccustomed warmth pushing the Arctic vitality. The fierce winds are not so chill as those of memory, and the still air does not suck out the heat so badly as it might. Life florishes, but the microorganisms of decay have the greatest gain, as ice water runs off to expose organic matter long frozen, shielded from bacteria for millenia. The rot gives off methane and carbon dioxide, and other light carbon-containing molecules, into the air. These climb as high as the troposphere, some molecules actually making the grade into the stratosphere. The methane stratifies off as the lighter gas, so tends to higher altitudes than the carbon dioxide, but both species are well diffused vertically. As to their horizontal spread, they form bands of circulation centered around the Pole. They just don't tend to leave the Pole, only wisps are grudgingly torn away to dissipate South of the Arctic Circle.

Carbon builds faster when the sun shines on the North Pole. But heat can still be trapped in the air over the pole, when the Sun is below the horizon, because of the unnatural, anthropogenic excess of gaseous carbon species. Heat radiation is captured (and returned) proportionally to this carbon excess. The polar environment is extraordinarily sensitive to heat, which generally triggers carbon release. Climatologists will generally assent to this. I say there is subtle but acute danger lurking in this environment.

Suppose there are traps laid for us there. Suppose there are vast carbon reservoirs waiting to be triggered to release their carbon catastrophically, in chain reactions. The most sinister suspect would be the methane hydrate beds, ice cages or clathrates holding imprisoned atoms of greenhouse gas. These are little known to us, and we only recently became aware that they are there. They are massively there, with perhaps a carbon weight comparable to the Arctic biosphere; maybe less, but a lot of carbon. Greater, at least, than the weight of the oil and coal in the Arctic. I feel some of these methane hydrate beds may be in hazard of carbon release, brought about by groundwater seepage. These beds lie under permafrost, and there is no free groundwater right now to convect heat to them. With permafrost melting, groundwater can circulate to places unreached for tens of thousands of years, and endanger the confinement of this carbon. Only a few such beds breached might release carbon at a faster rate than human endeavor, and present a possibility of that rare weather phenomonon, the explosion untouched by human hands.

Methane venting on a large scale invariably presents a fire hazard. Yet a danger of fire exists beyond this consideration, leaving the methane out of the picture, just from the vulnerable nature of the boreal forests. A fire upwind raises the carbon overhead downwind, and so indirectly warms the surface downwind by greenhouse blanketing. This local warming effect will dry the foliage, and make the downwind region more susceptible to forest fire itself. Far beyond the range to which any airborne cinders may fall, the invisible influence of the greenhouse gases produced by fire will raise the probability that a forest fire will start from an unrelated cause, through the indirection of this warming effect. The limited north-south circulation of the polar air mass causes greenhouse gases to accumulate in the Arctic, once produced there, giving unique regional danger, of linked causality creating a cascade of exothermal carbon releases. Fire begets more fire.

There is no natural law which prevents this cycle from getting out of hand. We have put too much carbon in the air too quickly, and we don't know what the consequences might be. We can chart our own conceptions, and make projections into the coming century of the gradual warming trend extrapolated from current readings. That is guesswork contrived out of wishful thinking, for temperature records from ice cores and sediment cores show that the climate of our planet does not change gradually, in graceful shallow curves. This world switches climate regimes drastically, so the mechanics of climate change must include forcing functions, which involve the self-reinforcing effect of positive feedback. Finding these mechanisms ought to be a high priority of science today. My speculations are an effort to suggest some of the consequences we may face for our haste and greed as a species. They are in line with the needs of climatologists to provide scenarios of climate change, which will fit the data of discrete switching of climate modes.

So from a carbon-capped pole, I proceed to conflagration of the boreal forests. The nature of a circuit with positive feedback, is to go to the extreme, the behavior which in transistor circuitry forms the basis of our digital technology. No one else dares to release their imagination on this topic, all are tacitly agreed to restrain their thoughts. Not even privately will people allow themselves to think, climate warming, what if it gets hot? Here is the horror story of what might happen if the North Pole were to get hot. The reason the South Pole isn't considered, is because it lacks land and forests around it, and methane under it, so it won't burn. The Arctic has fuel and air, so with a heat source it might burn. The dynamics of our spinning planet isolate its air, setting up the possibility that a dome of carbon could become trapped there. A firefighter will recognize the hazard that a closed room might flash over. We are concerned with much lower temperatures, and more indirect means for the propagation of fire, but if the smoke cannot clear, it will stay around. One principle of structural fires carries over to the planetary scale: the smoke is the real killer.