NASA's Ten-Year Mission To Study All the Ways the Arctic Is Doomed

Lasrick writes: NASA is kicking off the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, a decade-long effort to figure out just how bad things in northern US and Canada really are. The large-scale study will combine on-the-ground field studies as well as data from remote sensors—such as satellites and two season of 'intensive airborne surveys'—to improve how scientists analyze and model the effects of climate change on the region.

Comments

Re:Bender says

[ShanghaiBill]

DOOMED!!!!!

More like self destruction. After complaining that they are underfunded, NASA is crazy to be sticking their nose into a politically sensitive issue like this. They are likely to have their funding cut a lot more. The effect of climate change on forests is important, but "on-the-ground field studies" are not part of NASA's mission. They are a space agency, not the forest service.

the canadian scientists cannot help

[crispytwo]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...

And even if they could help, they could not talk about it

https://news.vice.com/article/...

we're doomed

Craters in Russian Arctic from methane gas

[billstewart]

WaPo article on craters in Siberia - apparently they're from methane gas evaporation, which is spectacularly bad news, because methane has more greenhouse effect than CO2. There's a lot of methane stored in frozen arctic tundra, and if warming temperatures make more of it escape, that's going to warm things up faster and make more of it escape.