Arctic warming will have high price tag

Methane released from hydrates could have $60 trillion worldwide cost; impacts could include floods, sea-level rise, extreme weather

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

The warming of the Arctic will have a massive worldwide economic impact that is largely being ignored, a group of researchers reported in the July 25 edition of “Nature.” The researchers from Erasmus University Rotterdam and Cambridge University say that the cost of just the release of methane from thawing permafrost in the East Siberian Sea off northern Russia could be $60 trillion, a figure approaching the size of the entire world economy in 2012.

Given the pivotal position of the Arctic in the functioning of the Earth’s oceans and climate, the warming Arctic, melting sea ice and disappearing permafrost will cause knock-on effects elsewhere in the world, with developing countries facing particular hardship from extreme weather, declining health and reduced agricultural production, the researchers say.

Of particular concern is the release of methane from methane hydrate, an ice-like solid that forms extensive deposits in the pressure and temperature conditions currently found under some Arctic seas, including the East Siberian Sea. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the gas blamed for human-induced global warming.

The researchers used a climate change assessment model to simulate and quantify the impacts of methane release on the global economy, taking into account the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change. The model assumed the rapid release of 50 gigatonnes of methane between 2015 and 2025 under two scenarios: a scenario in which the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continues on its current trend, and a low-emissions scenario in which there would be a 50 percent chance of holding the rise in global mean temperatures below 2 C.

The methane release would bring forward by 15-35 years the date by which that 2 C temperature rise would happen, to 2035 in the “business as usual” case and to 2040 in the low emissions case. This accelerated warming would add $60 trillion to the current estimated climate-change cost of $400 trillion for the first scenario and $82 trillion for the second scenarios, the researchers say. And other Arctic climate-change impacts such as changed ocean and atmospheric circulation will add substantially to those costs, the researchers say.

The researchers say that organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the International Monetary fund are failing to consider these Arctic-based global warming impacts in their assessments of threats to the world economy. The World Economic Forum has launched a Global Agenda Council on the Arctic but must do rigorous economic modeling and ask world leaders to consider the consider the economic time bomb of Arctic warming, the researchers say. The forum should also encourage the development of innovative climate change adaptation and mitigation plans, especially given the possibility of methane from hydrates being released in a sudden burst when the sea warms to a point where the hydrates are no longer stable.