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The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis: a Call to Action to the EPA Penn Sustainability Review Volume 1 Issue 8 Environmental Politics Article 4 5-5-2016 The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis: A Call to Action to the EPA Sasha Klebnikov Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/psr Part of the Environmental Studies Commons Recommended Citation Klebnikov, Sasha (2016) "The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis: A Call to Action to the EPA," Penn Sustainability Review: Vol. 1 : Iss. 8 , Article 4. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/psr/vol1/iss8/4 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/psr/vol1/iss8/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis: A Call to Action to the EPA This journal article is available in Penn Sustainability Review: https://repository.upenn.edu/psr/vol1/iss8/4 THE CLATHRATE GUN HYPOTHESIS: A CALL TO ACTION TO THE EPA By Sasha Klebnikov 22 “To declare national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man; to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation; and to establish a Council on Environmental Quality.” -NEPA Preamble, 1969 INTRODUCTION global temperature rise. The NGO he mandate of the Environmental Protection Resource T Due to the urgent risk of substantial climate Centre Climate Agency (EPA) is “to protect human health and Change change, specifcally where scenarios of warm- Working the environment.” How and where this man- Group, “What ing exceed 6°F,[2] the burden of preventive is the Climate date has been applied has changed drastically Change Work- action falls on the EPA, private organizations ing Group?” over its 45 years of existence, but it is becom- Accessed and the US Executive Offce. Under the Oct. 25, 2015, ing increasingly clear that the issue of methane VUFO - NGO framework of the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Resource clathrates must now be accounted for. Centre. http:// National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and www.ngocen- tre.org.vn/web- the rulings of Massachusetts vs EPA (2005), it fm_send/849 Methane clathrates (also known as methane The NGO appears that the EPA has suffcient authority Resource hydrates), are crystalline structures in which Centre Climate to increase regulations on methane emissions, Change gaseous methane is trapped within water Working but frm emission limits are driven by economic Group, “What matrices. This occurs under high pressure, is the Climate and political concerns, not environmental Change Work- low temperature and high density. The global ing Group?” considerations. Indeed, the concrete and p. 2. reserves of methane clathrates are enormous, Ibid. severe threat of a ‘Clathrate Gun’ will likely be Ibid. with studies suggesting there is equivalent enough to enable the EPA to begin a new set carbon (in terms of warming potential or of more wide-reaching, national, emissions potential energy) compared to between half regulations, without relying on the Clean Air and three times the reserves of all other fossil Act for authority. fuels combined[1]. These reserves are most abundantly contained in either shallow conti- nental shelves under the ocean and in Arctic METHANE permafrost. CLATHRATES What is worrying is that as local tempera- Methane clathrates are solid clathrate com- tures rise or reservoir pressures decrease, pounds in which large amounts of methane methane clathrates degenerate into liquid (CH4) are trapped within an H20 crystalline water and gaseous methane. This methane structure, similar in shape to ice. Methane then may bubble to the atmosphere, and clathrates form in the Gas Hydrate Stability then act as a potent greenhouse gas. As Zone (GHSZ), a region bounded by having a methane is released from an ice formation, high pressure and a low temperature (Figure the local hydrostatic pressure in the formation 1), which is typically above 1500m. Clathrates decreases, causing more methane to be can occur both under the ocean, near coast- Klebnikov released--a positive feedback loop. As such, lines and in permafrost. While many studies massive volumes of gas can rapidly enter the have examined the effects of oceanic clathrate environment with only relatively minor changes formations on ocean acidifcation and the in local conditions; a runaway reaction known threat of underwater clathrate releases, these as the ‘Clathrate Gun’ starts, causing drastic situations provide a less urgent threat than 23 Arctic formation degradation; such oceanic IPCC, 2014: Cli- mate Change effects occur over decades, while Arctic clath- 2014: Synthesis Report. rate releases occur on a timescale of just years. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Arctic methane clathrates are typically bound Assessment Report of the within large ice structures. Due to the low Intergovern- mental Panel temperature of permafrost, Arctic clathrate on Climate Change [Core formations can exist very near the surface. Writing Team, R.K. Pachau- Indeed there are several productive natural gas ri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. reservoirs in Siberia, such as the Messoyakha IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, feld, that are believed to be slowly decaying 151 pp. Shindell, D.T., methane clathrate formations. G. Faluvegi, D.M. Koch, G.A. Schmidt, N. Unger, and Most Arctic clathrate formations are so called S.E. Bauer, 2009: Improved ‘secondary deposits’: the formation cycles attribution of climate forcing between pure hydrate and a water-hydrate-gas to emissions. Science, 326, mixture. Due to the ~500m thick permafrost 716-718, doi:10.1126/sci- cap, there are effectively no escape vectors Arctic will likely prevent full degradation of ence.1174760. Taraborelli, D for the gas, so the formations stay sealed for methane releases, increasing the impact of et al. “Hydroxyl radical buffered millions of years. The concern is that as global large-scale methane discharge. Taken togeth- by isoprene oxidation temperatures rise and short term temperature er this suggests an ominous feedback loop. over tropical forests” Nature anomalies become more drastic[3], new Geoscience 5, 190-193 (2012). escape vectors in the permafrost will form, An even more important metric than Global doi:10.1038/ ngeo1405 allowing the release of gas. Warming Potential is Local Warming Potential Khalil, M.A.K., Rasmussen, (LWP). It typically takes ~6 months for gases R.A., “Causes of increasing There is a clear record that this has happened to fully disperse from their emission site, but atmospheric methane: De- before when a reservoir slump in South Caroli- for the Arctic, the lack of the Jet Stream slows pletion of hy- droxyl radicals na 14,000 years ago discharged enough meth- migration. It is conservative to expect 20% of and the rise of emissions”, ane to increase atmospheric levels by 4%[4] any Arctic methane release to remain in place Atmospheric Environment changing the entire atmosphere in less than a after fve years. In this scenario (Figure 2), a 19, 3, 397-407, (1985) week. There is fear that this phenomena may methane clathrate release would have the rapidly occur at multiple nearby reservoirs, same warming potency (LWP) as a CO2 release setting off a chain reaction (the proverbial 1000 times its size emitted elsewhere.[9,10] Clathrate Gun). Thus, the decay of any single methane clath- METHANE IN THE rate formation may cause drastic local warming and temperature aberrations, setting off ATMOSPHERE runaway warming scenario known as the Clath- Over a span of 100 years, a single molecule rate Gun. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab[11] of methane has equal warming potential as named methane clathrate destabilization as 28 units of CO2. However, for shorter time one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, periods it is much higher, with a Global Warm- noting massively elevated methane concen- ing Potential (GWP) of 84[5], in which a single trations during the thermal maximum between ton of methane can cause the same global the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, some temperature rise over the next twenty years as 55 million years ago, causing temperatures 84 tons of CO2. between 5℃ and 8℃ higher than today.[12] Methane require hydroxyl radicals (OH ions) to Despite apocalyptic predictions, the science be broken down. When high concentrations is not conclusively settled. Estimates for Arctic are released too quickly, demand for OH ions emissions vary from 6 to 50 times[13] current exceeds supply[6,7,8]. The conditions in the atmospheric methane levels. The most recent 24 Goddard Insti- studies suggest it is reasonable to expect a The court ruled that the EPA is mandated tute for Space Studies, NASA, widespread methane clathrate degradation to regulate, control and reduce greenhouse ‘Interactions with Aerosols event would push atmospheric methane levels gases under sections 202 and 111(d) of the boost warming potential of to 12 times of our current value.[14] However, Clean Air Act. The original language of the some gases”, Oct 29, 2009. as methane clathrates have been trapped for Clean Air Act of 1970 was specifcally broadly Retrieved online at www. millions of years, it is also not clear whether the written, defning an ‘Air Pollutant’ as even “a giss.nasa.gov/ research/ threat will actually come in play on the time- precursor to the formation of any air pollut- Carana, S., “Methane Hy- frames we are considering. Without witnessing ant”.[15] It is clear that both CO2 and CH4 drates”, April 1, 2013, Meth- an actual clathrate formation slump in real fall within this defnition, and since 2005, this ane-Hydrates. blogspot.com time, the science remains ambiguous. Supreme Court decision has been reaffrmed Camer- on-Smith, P., on three subsequent occasions.[16] Press, P., “IM- PACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate BASIS FOR Thus it is clear there are legal grounds for Changes” Law- rence Berkeley regulating typical methane emissions under Lab News, Sept REGULATION 17,2008, the Clean Air Act (CAA).
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