Is Arctic methane stoking the climate crisis?
The vast wildfires now ravaging the world’s northernmost regions herald rising danger for all humanity, no matter where we live.
To people worldwide desperately trying to rebuild their lives and homes following devastation by hurricane, flood, drought and sea-surge, what happens in the remote Arctic may seem of small importance. But it has the capacity to ignite climate ruin on an epic scale.
In a new report[1], scientists from Korea, Japan, Norway and the USA warn that as the frozen northern wastes of North America, Europe and Asia melt they face an abrupt increase in wildfires – accompanied by a massive outpouring of natural greenhouse gases. Over these, humans will have no means of control.
The risk of an explosive increase of planet-heating gases from the far north has had climate scientists anxious for a while – but, until recently, the evidence has been hard to read and expert opinion has been divided on the scale and imminence of the threat. Now proofs are starting to stack up that, by melting the poles, we may be unleashing the whirlwind.
Of particular concern is the surge in methane (CH4), a planet-heating gas 70-80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) over the short run.
Figure 1. World atmospheric methane levels are rising steeply. Source: NOAA 2024
In recent years, methane levels in the world atmosphere have been galloping ahead. Researchers think that 60% of the methane in the atmosphere is directly attributable to human activity, such as fossil fuels, cattle and rice farming and waste disposal – while 40% is from natural sources, such as tropical swamps, forest fires and polar melting. It is the latter that is now raising concern.
As the Arctic tundra melts, the thawing soils emit methane gas that has been safely locked away for tens of thousands of years. The landscape becomes boggy and covered in shallow lakes. Bacteria thrive, emitting still more methane. Icy lakes erupt into flame.
On the seabed, warming seawater dissolves ancient frozen methane deposits known as clathrates and the ocean fizzes like an uncapped soft drink.
These processes have been triggered by planetary heating driven by human burning of fossil fuels and land clearing. And the Arctic is heating four times faster than the average for Planet Earth [2].
There is no easy way to put this climate genie back in the bottle, once the Earth starts to churn out global heating gases on its own.
In theory, if we could eliminate human carbon emissions (‘net zero’) by 2050, we might start to cool the planet sufficiently to avoid disastrous processes like polar melting taking hold. That’s the view of the climate optimists. The pessimists point to the reality of a steady increase in our own carbon emissions as indicative that ‘business as usual’ is still locked in, for humans and the Planet. This will create a ‘Hothouse Earth’ of +3-4 degrees C by 2100, rendering most of the planet uninhabitable. The Arctic will be 12-15 degrees warmer.
In 2018 the renowned British science broadcaster David Attenborough warned that the world was facing the collapse of civilisation if it did not unite to reduce its carbon emissions.
Now, with the melting of the Arctic and the release of millions of tonnes of frozen methane, the Earth may just have reached the point where it generates hothouse conditions all on its own, regardless of what we might do.
Figure 2. Methane eruption in Siberian tundra.
As the Planet overheats, by 2 and then 3 degrees, most experts now anticipate a series of worsening famines, driven by climate hammer blows – droughts, floods and storms – causing devastation to world agriculture. At the same time water scarcity in the drier regions will become acute for over a billion people.
These will progressively release floods of refugees out of the most damaged regions into those that appear more stable. At the same time food and water will become scarcer and less affordable for everyone. Borders will vanish and governments be swept away. Wars may break out in the scramble for basic resources. The world economy will implode like the Titan submersible.
A bitter and deadly struggle for survival will ensue, from which no ‘country’ is immune, or sufficiently remote. Whether there will be any ‘winners’ is doubtful. Canadian author Gwynne Dyer, in his book ‘Climate Wars’ thought about 300,000 humans might be left, clinging on in the now-melted Arctic regions. At +4 degrees, eminent climate scientist Joachim Schellnhuber estimated the Earth would be able to support fewer than one billion people.
In just one month (September 2024) the world saw devastating floods strike regions of Turkey, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Spain, France, Italy, India, Britain, Guatemala, Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Croatia, Nigeria, Thailand, Greece, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and the United States. This is just the overture.
As Arctic methane turns up the gas burner on the Planet, the rate at which water is drawn into the warming atmosphere will increase exponentially, leading to fiercer floods storms. Researchers calculate that global heating caused Hurricane Helene to dump <50% more rain over the US states of Georgia and South Carolina. [3]
Major disruption to the food supply has already begun: the number of hungry people in the world is now around 2.3 billion, with 800 million in 18 countries facing acute food scarcity. Soaring food prices are among the forces destabilising the politics of high-wealth countries such as the US, UK and in Europe.
While it may seem remote, Arctic methane is starting to emerge as a driver of global insecurity – a new form of insecurity that all the aircraft, submarines, tanks, missiles and military gold braid are powerless to overcome. The world is still investing for the last war – not the scarcity to come. Each year, we spend $2 trillion just to buy new arms.
If only a quarter of that sum was invested in renewable food and energy, secure water and regreening the planet to draw down climate emissions, we could maybe save half of humanity, or more, from the havoc of collapse. But will we?
In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “Greenhouse gases are heating our planet, expanding seawater & melting ice. Only drastic action to reduce emissions can ... keep people safe.”
It is time for drastic action. [4]
[1] Kim, IW., Timmermann, A., Kim, JE. et al. Abrupt increase in Arctic-Subarctic wildfires caused by future permafrost thaw. Nat Commun 15, 7868 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51471-x
[2] Rantanen, M., Karpechko, A.Y., Lipponen, A. et al. The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979. Commun Earth Environ 3, 168 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00498-3
[3] Risser M et al. Climate change may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14oq65lavZ7ho3-gdxE-tutDEcsxSHfUj/view
[4] For what action we can all take, see ‘How to Fix a Broken Planet’ (Cambridge 2023)