Date: 04/30/12
Time
: 07:56 AK
Weather:
Cloudy
Broken
Clouds at 500 feet
Overcast
at 27 feet
Visibilty:
8mi
Temperature: 39 degrees Fahrenheit
Dew point: 36 degrees Fahrenheit
Relative
Humidity: 89%
Wind: NorthWest at 9mph
Wind: NorthWest at 9mph
Presssure:
29.60 inches of mercury
Pressure:
1002.4 → millibars
Forecast for the next week:
Today...Periods of rain. Highs around 46. North wind 10 mph.
Tonight...Rain likely. Lows around 37. Light winds.
Tuesday...Rain likely. Highs around 50. Light winds.
Tuesday Night...Rain. Lows around 37. Southeast wind 10 mph.
Wednesday...Rain. Highs around 49. Southeast wind 10 mph.
Wednesday Night And Thursday...Cloudy. Chance of rain. Lows around 37. Highs around 51.
Thursday Night And Friday...Mostly cloudy. Chance of rain. Lows around 37. Highs around 51.
Friday Night...Rain likely. Lows around 37.
Saturday Through Sunday...Rain likely. Highs around 52. Lows around 37.
Tonight...Rain likely. Lows around 37. Light winds.
Tuesday...Rain likely. Highs around 50. Light winds.
Tuesday Night...Rain. Lows around 37. Southeast wind 10 mph.
Wednesday...Rain. Highs around 49. Southeast wind 10 mph.
Wednesday Night And Thursday...Cloudy. Chance of rain. Lows around 37. Highs around 51.
Thursday Night And Friday...Mostly cloudy. Chance of rain. Lows around 37. Highs around 51.
Friday Night...Rain likely. Lows around 37.
Saturday Through Sunday...Rain likely. Highs around 52. Lows around 37.
Arctic exploration to study undersea greenhouse gases (click here)
By Margaret Munro
Postmedia News
The oil and gas industry may be eyeing the energy riches under the Arctic Ocean, but scientists are even keener to start drilling in Canada's polar waters.
They say the Beaufort Sea, in the western Canadian Arctic, holds clues to several environmental mysteries of global significance - chief among them why so much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is now seeping out of the sea floor.
An international team is proposing an ambitious drilling program to extract some answers. Researchers from Canada, the United States, Europe and Korea want to drill a series of wells from the Mackenzie Delta across the Beaufort Sea.
If approved, drilling could begin as early as 2015, the first holes bored into the Canadian Arctic in years....
...She and her colleagues say the Beaufort is the best place in the Arctic to assess the stability of undersea permafrost and gas deposits and to fill in big gaps in climate science.
They want to drill down through sediments that have rained onto the sea floor over eons, revealing how the Arctic ice has waxed and waned, and into the thick slabs of permafrost and frozen gas beneath the sea floor that have the potential to accelerate global warming....
...The shallow waters that fringe the Arctic are among the most dynamic and understudied part of the world's oceans, says geologist Scott Dallimore, at Natural Resources Canada, co-leader of the planned project. The waters cover continental shelves that run more than three million square kilometres along the north coasts of North America and Siberia, or 30 per cent of the Arctic Ocean.
Permafrost hundreds of metres thick occurs on the shelves, and has been slowly warming since the end of the last ice age.
As the slabs of permafrost warm, they can destabilize the sea bed, generating underwater landslides that send sediments barrelling down from the continental shelf into the deep ocean.
One landslide, discovered by Natural Resources Canada scientists in the Beaufort, left more than 200 square kilometres of sediments strewn across the deep-sea floor.
More worrisome to many observers is the massive store of methane sitting beneath the permafrost in the form of gas hydrates....
If one recalls 'gas hydrates' of methane was the sole reason BP's containment operations in the Gulf of Mexico with of the exploded well head of Deepwater Horizon failed. The giant cement cap, which was to funnel gas and oil to a waiting ship above to contain the rupture, was lifted off the sea floor due to frozen methane hydrates. With the sheer knowledge of these structures existing naturally in the Arctic waters, there is profound concern over the drilling by the petroleum industry in this region of Earth. The conditions at these sites are far more harsh than the Gulf of Mexico. This simple reality has significant impacts on the petroleum industry's covetous ideas of oil and gas deposits there.
They say the Beaufort Sea, in the western Canadian Arctic, holds clues to several environmental mysteries of global significance - chief among them why so much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is now seeping out of the sea floor.
An international team is proposing an ambitious drilling program to extract some answers. Researchers from Canada, the United States, Europe and Korea want to drill a series of wells from the Mackenzie Delta across the Beaufort Sea.
If approved, drilling could begin as early as 2015, the first holes bored into the Canadian Arctic in years....
...She and her colleagues say the Beaufort is the best place in the Arctic to assess the stability of undersea permafrost and gas deposits and to fill in big gaps in climate science.
They want to drill down through sediments that have rained onto the sea floor over eons, revealing how the Arctic ice has waxed and waned, and into the thick slabs of permafrost and frozen gas beneath the sea floor that have the potential to accelerate global warming....
...The shallow waters that fringe the Arctic are among the most dynamic and understudied part of the world's oceans, says geologist Scott Dallimore, at Natural Resources Canada, co-leader of the planned project. The waters cover continental shelves that run more than three million square kilometres along the north coasts of North America and Siberia, or 30 per cent of the Arctic Ocean.
Permafrost hundreds of metres thick occurs on the shelves, and has been slowly warming since the end of the last ice age.
As the slabs of permafrost warm, they can destabilize the sea bed, generating underwater landslides that send sediments barrelling down from the continental shelf into the deep ocean.
One landslide, discovered by Natural Resources Canada scientists in the Beaufort, left more than 200 square kilometres of sediments strewn across the deep-sea floor.
More worrisome to many observers is the massive store of methane sitting beneath the permafrost in the form of gas hydrates....
If one recalls 'gas hydrates' of methane was the sole reason BP's containment operations in the Gulf of Mexico with of the exploded well head of Deepwater Horizon failed. The giant cement cap, which was to funnel gas and oil to a waiting ship above to contain the rupture, was lifted off the sea floor due to frozen methane hydrates. With the sheer knowledge of these structures existing naturally in the Arctic waters, there is profound concern over the drilling by the petroleum industry in this region of Earth. The conditions at these sites are far more harsh than the Gulf of Mexico. This simple reality has significant impacts on the petroleum industry's covetous ideas of oil and gas deposits there.
