As fascinating as it might be to see a scientist potentially holding a pile of mammoth poo in his hands, this is not a good sign for the planet.
Over 10% of the earth’s surface is covered in tundra, a thin layer of slow-growing plant matter (dwarf shrubs, grasses, mosses, lichens, etc.), which covers a frozen bog of organic matter called permafrost.
Due to very short growing seasons and very low temperatures, the expansive areas of tundra in the frigid north of Russia, Alaska, Canada, etc., can only support an incredibly slow breakdown of organic material. Essentially, permafrost stores thousands of years of plant and animal organic matter. It is a vast carbon sink. Or, at least, it was….
If you’ve ever heard the terms ‘runaway effects’ or ‘feedback loops’ in connection with climate change — thawing permafrost is arguably the most significant amongst them.
As the world warms, the permafrost thaws, speeding up the ‘metabolism’ of these regions. This allows micro-organisms that normally struggle to function at lower temperatures to suddenly begin working at an accelerated rate — subsequently releasing incomprehensible amounts of CO2, and, even worse, methane, into the atmosphere. Methane is "over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period" (USEPA). Scientists state our atmosphere contains two and a half times as much methane as it did in pre-industrial times, and, with millions of square miles of permafrost beginning to release their store, this looks set to increase dramatically.
Global warming melts permafrost. Permafrost releases billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. Global warming gets a shot in the arm. This is just one of many feedback loops getting underway.
Although on the decline, there are still an inordinate amount of climate skeptics out there who fail to grasp the implications of rising global temperatures — some even naively look forward to warmer winters and hotter summers, believing the most important impacts for them will be the kind of shirt they’ll be able to wear or reduced heating costs. Naivety, with some subjects, can be cute and becoming, but with climate science it’s just plain dangerous.
Further Reading:
- Arctic Sea Belching Tons of Methane
- Papers on permafrost thawing
- An Ocean of Unknown
- Permafrost unearths mammoth remains in Siberia (YouTube)
- Greenland Glacier Shrinking Fast (YouTube)
- The Biology of Global Warming
- Loess Plateau Revisited, and Other Examples of Earth Healing
