But other researchers think the permafrost warming started only recently. "This is the first time in 12,000 years the Arctic Ocean has warmed up 7 degrees in the summer, and that's entirely new because the sea ice hasn't been there to hold the temperatures down," said Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., who was not involved in the study. The summer ice melt season has lasted longer since 2005, giving the sun more time to warm the ocean. [10 Things You Need to Know About Arctic Sea Ice]
"If we do have a methane burst it's going to be catastrophic," Wadhams said. Earlier this year, Wadhams and colleagues in Britain calculated that a mega-methane release from the Siberian shelf could push global temperatures up by 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius). The suggestion, published in the journal Nature, was widely debated by climate researchers. Climate change experts and international negotiators have said that keeping the rise in Earth's average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Shakova said much more research is needed to understand the factors that control how much methane is released from the entire East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which covers 772,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers), or nearly one-fifth the size of the United States.
"Ten years ago we started from zero knowledge in this area," Shakova said. "This is the largest shelf in the world's oceans. That's why it's very challenging to understand the natural processes behind the methane emissions in this area."
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.
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Twice as Much Methane Escaping Arctic Seafloor
I still think that we might be able to reverse the effects of global warming by using weather balloons to take up pyroclastic volcanic glass in powder form like Volcanoes send up which occludes the sun. This could be done around the poles to reduce ice loss. At this point there are conflicting needs of people and corporations regarding this. For example, large countries and corporations want to sail across the ice free arctic oceans because of new opening up shipping lanes as the ice melts. However, generally people want to stay alive so they might be better served by seeding the arctic high atmosphere with volcanic pyroclastic glass in the upper atmosphere to reduce temperatures and to reduce ice melting. So, there are the short term needs of companies and countries and then there are the long term needs of the human race to not go extinct. Which will ultimately win?
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