Carbon from methane hydrates is depleted in carbon 13, an isotope of carbon. This is one of the main fossil signatures (a shift in C12 to C13 isotope ratios) from past apparent methane catastrophes, such as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum and the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

So, it should be possible to estimate and monitor the rate of dissociation of the methane hydrates by real time monitoring of the carbon 12 to carbon 13 isotope ratios.

I think there are a few projects to do this, using mass spectrometers, but we need to do this on a much larger scale, and track down and remediate methane hydrate plumes whenever we can, IMO.

Or, maybe not.

The site where the 10X higher rate of acidification was measured, Tatoosh Island off Washington state, is close to the middle of a big deposit of methane hydrates, designated P9 on this USGS poster:

http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/ globalhydrate/ images/ browse.jpg

The bad news is that this pH measurement might indicate significant hydrate dissociation.

The good news might be that this is an atypical result, and that a significant amount of acidification is coming from the hydrates. So, it might be a localized phenomenon.

Darn straight, we need to find out ASAP.

These deposits are located on the Juan de Fuca plate, mentioned as a possible extremely secure and huge reservoir for deep injection of CO2, in this paper:

http://www.pnas.org/ content/ 105/ 29/ 9920.full.pdf+html

If there are methane hydrate plumes bubbling up off Washington State, we need to capture the methane, burn it with CCS while generating electricity, and deep inject the resulting CO2 down into the Juan de Fuca plate, ASAP, and do whatever we can to limit this ocean acidification, if this hypothesis to explain the low pH readings is correct.

Just an idea.

Don’t know what to hope, whether it’s right or wrong.

This global warming is like a nightmare, like a slow motion train wreck.

And, it’s going to get a lot worse, under any reasonable set of assumptions, before it gets better.

What scares me is that we have already passed the tipping point of runaway CO2 emissions from NATURAL sources. Melting Arctic, burning Amazon rainforest, reduced ocean circulation, etc… So very soon, it won’t matter when humans cut emissions or not, because these natural sources are two orders of magnitude greater than human emissions.

Frankly, we are going to need geoengineering to prevent these runaway feedbacks from saying “game over”.

There are two types of geoengineering that reduce both atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidifcation. Ocean Iron Fertilization, and the Accelerated Weathering of Limestone. Even though there are significant risks associated with both, I think the risk of not doing them is very likely much greater. We must accelerate scientific research many fold to find out definitively which carries greater risk.

I wasn’t talking about the specific hydrate plumes found off West Spitsbergen, but was talking generically about other hydrate plumes in the Arctic, which might be bubbling away without our knowledge in the Arctic region.

This would be consistent with the warming of waters in the Arctic, sad to say.

http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/ nocs/ news.php?action=display_news&idx=628

he warming of an Arctic current over the last 30 years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed.
Warming Ocean Contributes to Global Warming – 14/08/09

The warming of an Arctic current over the last 30 years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed.

Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.

The BBC story that Joe links to above that says that ocean acidification is increasing ten times faster than previously estimated gets its data from the Pacific Northwest, off the Washington coast.

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/48/18848.full

It seems possible that this might be Arctic water, with increased CO2 levels from methanotroph bacteria feeding off of these hydrate plumes.

It might be possible to remediate some (but not all) of the impact from these hydrate plumes in a carbon neutral way, by capturing the methane from them, burning the methane using carbon capture technologies to generate electricity, and deep injecting the CO2 into basalt strata below the ocean floor.