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Alaska's Permafrost Is Thawing (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the changing-landscape dept.

Henry Fountain reports via The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages. But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state. Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter -- plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities. In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state's biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.

5 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Time to plant trees by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Time to plant trees. Lots of trees.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    1. Re:Time to plant trees by quantaman · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, and its part of a natural cycle. The polar caps on Mars are also melting, but we seem to be peaking and cycling back into the cold half again for another 11 or 22 or 28 or 88 years. There are several cycles that sometimes harmonize to cause the extremes.

      Solar cycle extremes as a seasonal predictor of Atlantic-Basin tropical cyclones

      FTA:
      Minimum sunspot years and the AMO index can combine to explain more than 54 percent of the variations in total tropical cyclones and nearly 46 percent of the variation in tropical cyclone days. Solar cycle extremes should be considered for more accurate seasonal tropical cyclone predictions.

      So what does that have to do with the permafrost melting, or even global warming more generally?

      Did you just find a peer reviewed article talking about sunspots and figured no one would realize it didn't support your argument?

      --
      I stole this Sig
    2. Re:Time to plant trees by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Informative

      You could cover the entire planet surface with trees and it still wouldn't be enough. It's time to start using technology to produce billions of machines that actively and permanently remove carbon from the air.

      Okay. But until we have such machines, the most readily available carbon-sink, cost-effective and easily deployed with unskilled labour, is the tree.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  2. Every generation is phenomenally stupid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Every generation is phenomenally stupid about something that should be blindingly obvious.

    The fact that we've dominated the environment to the degree we have should be obvious - we've gone from 2% of the land mammal biomass to 98% when you include our livestock.

    We have evidence of multiple mass extinctions caused by exactly these same events:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    I agree with the thought that some of the established concepts can have some bullshit in it - but that's exactly why we need repeatable research done and confirmed, and USED TO IMPROVE THINGS before we basically repeat history and ruin the planet for millions of years again.

    The Trump move to eliminate climate research, and to silence researchers is more than the normal level of stupid.

  3. Re:Unstable equilibrium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "why hasn't there been runaway carbon dioxide warming in the past?"

    End Permian, 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost

    Known as “the great dying”, this was by far the worst extinction event ever seen; it nearly ended life on Earth. The tabulate corals were lost in this period – today’s corals are an entirely different group. What caused it? A perfect storm of natural catastrophes. A cataclysmic eruption near Siberia blasted CO2 into the atmosphere. Methanogenic bacteria responded by belching out methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Global temperatures surged while oceans acidified and stagnated, belching poisonous hydrogen sulfide. It set life back 300 million years.