methane, previously trapped in permafrost, bubbles to the surface of a lake in alaska.
turns out that as we cook the planet, all this ancient methane (a very potent greenhouse gas) is leaving storage and entering the atmosphere. how much carbon is locked in northern soils? “They calculated that there was about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, about 88 percent of it locked in permafrost. That is about two and a half times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.”
get to page 4 where the author writes about tundra on fire. “the fire and its aftermath sent a huge pulse of carbon into the air — as much as would be emitted in two years by a city the size of Miami.”
and in case you think this is just an isolated incident, check out the recent dramatic methane release from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf being researched by Igor Semiletov
“In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed,” Dr Semiletov said. “We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.”
“Some estimates put the amount of carbon trapped in shelf permafrost at 1,600 billion tonnes - roughly twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere now. The release of this once captive carbon from destabilised ocean sediments and permafrost would have catastrophic effect on our climate and life on Earth, warn the scientists.”
global warming game on.
photo credit - Josh Haner, nytimes
