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Tag: permafrost
Report: We can avoid the worst effects of climate change, but we’re still in for a fight
Popular Science: We can avoid the worst effects of climate change, but we’re still in for a fight. We may still be able to reverse some of the major effects if we cross the crucial threshold.
It’s easy to get disheartened about climate change. To keep global warming within the safe threshold of 1.5ºC adopted by the Paris Agreement, we need to have declines in carbon emissions on par with those of 2020, a year in which a global pandemic forced transportation and industry to slow down. As economies rev back up, it’s understandable to be anxious that things will return back to “normal,” a planet-wrecking status quo.
But even if the odds of global leaders shifting gears to focus on mitigating climate change are low, it’s not cause for climate doomerism. Every bit of warming we ward off helps. A new review in the journal Nature illustrates that even if we overshoot a global warming threshold, it won’t necessarily destabilize crucial Earth systems—including ice sheets, ocean currents, and tropical forests—right away. “If you change [the course of emissions] fast enough, you can avoid certain consequences that might be otherwise irreversible,” says Valerio Lucarini, a physicist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the study. “I think the paper does a good job in making this clear.”
Global warming targets like 1.5ºC are based on what researchers think is needed to avoid setting off powerful and irreversible changes to the biosphere that could devastate humans and ecosystems. But Paul Ritchie, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter who led the study, says that a common misconception is that once we cross a climate threshold, all is lost—that processes like ice melt will spin out of control until the Earth equilibrates at a new, hotter normal. “You often hear that we are very close to the threshold now [for ice sheet collapse]—some say we’ve already crossed it—and that means, apparently, that we’re committed to suffering a large [amount of] ice melt,” he says. “That’s not necessarily the case.”
Why Drilling the Arctic Refuge Will Release a Double Dose of Carbon
Yale Environment 360: Why Drilling the Arctic Refuge Will Release a Double Dose of Carbon. In the renewed debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one troubling impact of oil development has been overlooked: Disrupting the annual caribou migration will have a profound effect on the soil and release even more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
Study: Alaska’s permafrost, which stores greenhouse gases, is less plentiful and more fragile than believed
The Washington Post discusses Alaska’s permafrost, which stores greenhouse gases, is less plentiful and more fragile than believed, study says.
Scientists long thought that the ground beneath the northern coasts of Alaska was permanently frozen. That was good news; permafrost stores large amounts of carbon, methane and other planet-warming gases, and coastal permafrost was thought to be a critical buffer against both global warming and coastal erosion.
That model could be very wrong. A new study documents an absence of permafrost along a coastal site in northeastern Alaska — and warns that coastal permafrost is more fragile than once thought. The study in the journal Science Advances documents efforts to map the subsurface of the Kaktovik Lagoon, a shallow bay at the edge of a large tundra underpinned by permafrost.
How thawing permafrost could fuel climate warming
Reuters discusses how thawing permafrost could fuel climate warming. The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, and some scientists believe that thawing permafrost — ground frozen since the last Ice Age — is about to release enormous amounts of climate-warming emissions.
Permafrost can contain the remains of plants and animals, including woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos from the last Ice Age that ended more than 11,000 years ago. As permafrost thaws, that organic material begins to decompose.
What is permafrost? In the coldest regions of planet Earth, ice binds together soil, rock, sand and organic matter. This layer of permafrost can begin just centimeters below the Earth’s surface.
Oil drillers move into Arctic waters badly affected by climate change
The Barents Observer discusses how oil drillers are moving into Arctic waters badly affected by climate change. Sea-ice is shrinking, permafrost melting and marine ecosystems undergoing dramatic change. Russian petroleum companies plan big drilling and massive field development in the shallow waters of the Ob Bay.
Oil reserves and natural gas in abundance. The Ob Bay and surrounding peninsulas of Yamal and Gydan is like a vast bubble of hydrocarbons waiting to be untapped.
This is now a top priority region for the Russian oil and gas industry. From before, Gazprom and Novatek have opened large projects like the Bovanenkovo and Yamal LNG in the Yamal Peninsula, and the same two companies are in the process of developing several more projects like the Kharasavey and Arctic LNG 2.
Study: Researchers dig into Canadian North to understand carbon storage in permafrost
CBC discusses researchers dig into Canadian North to understand carbon storage in permafrost. Carbon isn’t just being released in soil, it’s potentially reaching lakes and rivers, study finds.
Scientists have long suspected thawing permafrost is bad news for the environment.
A new study, recently published in Nature Communications, looks to understand how carbon locked in the frozen ground is released into the atmosphere by studying core samples from across northern Canada.
“This study has really augmented the knowledge of the permafrost carbon pools across a large swath of Canada that was previously … never examined before,” said Melissa Lafrenière, the study’s principal investigator. The study was written and led by Julien Fouché with Queen’s University.
When carbon in the soil is converted to carbon dioxide it can contribute to climate warming, said Lafrenière.
The study found carbon is not only being released in the thawing soil, it’s also ending up in water and potentially being flushed into lakes and rivers where it’s quickly broken down into carbon dioxide.
Permafrost results in $20M water costs for Alaska zinc mine
AP News discusses how Permafrost results in $20M water costs for Alaska zinc mine.
A company operating one of the world’s largest zinc mines in northwest Alaska said thawing permafrost linked to global warming forced an expenditure of nearly $20 million on water storage and discharge management.
Teck Resources Ltd. says permafrost thaw in the watershed surrounding the massive Red Dog Mine is releasing higher natural levels of dissolved minerals and other particles into streams, Alaska’s Energy Desk reported Tuesday.
Study: Wildfires Trigger Long-Term Permafrost Thawing
Eos.org discusses how wildfires are triggering long-term permafrost thawing. Researchers used satellite data to trace ground subsidence in a permafrost-rich region in eastern Siberia following a wildfire.
Permafrost underlies much of the far north, but this amalgam of ice and frozen soil is far from stable—it’s thawing as temperatures rise worldwide. That’s bad news because permafrost is a significant repository of carbon, which can be readily converted into carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Now, researchers have used satellite remote sensing to monitor one signature of permafrost thawing—ground subsidence—after a wildfire in eastern Siberia. Surprisingly, the team found that parts of Earth’s surface subsided more than others despite the relative homogeneity of the fire. This variation is likely due to differences in the thickness of the insulating active layer directly above the permafrost, the scientists suggest.
Kazuki Yanagiya and Masato Furuya, both geophysicists at Hokkaido University in Japan, focused on a 3,600-hectare swath of permafrost in eastern Siberia, Russia. The region, composed of low shrubs dotted with 3- to 5-meter-tall larch trees, burned in July 2014 in a wildfire of unknown cause.
These results were published in June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface.
Study: Climate change, Northern rains, and permafrost – 3 articles
The Narwhal discusses how climate change is causing more rain in the North. That’s bad news for permafrost. Longer, rainier summers are thawing permafrost at an accelerated rate in interior Alaska, according to a new study, begging the question: what does this mean for rainy summers in the Canadian North? “Thawing is happening even faster than we thought,” said Thomas Douglas, an environmental engineer with the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory and lead author of the study. “We’ve had these crazy wet summers. It’s gonna be bad for permafrost.” The study, published in the journal Nature, found that between 0.6 and 0.8 centimetres of permafrost thawed for every centimetre of above-average rainfall in Alaska between 2013 and 2017.
NPR discusses the same study. Whatever Happened To … The Melting Permafrost? In 2018, we reported on concerns that zombie pathogens — ancient bacteria and viruses that could potentially rise from the dead and threaten humans if the layers of frozen permafrost where they’re buried thaw as the Earth warms. The consensus among the scientists interviewed was: It’s unlikely — although there was one tantalizing anecdote about a scientist whose knee may have become infected after contact with a defrosted seal. But we did want to follow up and see what the latest research says about thawing permafrost — and have learned of another threat posed by its demise. It’s not just warmer temperatures that pose a problem for the permafrost. Scientists are now investigating whether rainfall could be causing serious issues in the Arctic’s permafrost – with repercussions for humans.
Arctic Today discusses the same study showing how heavy summer rains speed permafrost thaw. The Arctic is getting rainier, but relatively few studies so far have taken rain’s effect on permafrost thaw into account. It’s widely understood that rising temperatures in the North are thawing permafrost. And the relationships between permafrost thaw and disturbances such wildfire, landslides and poorly planned construction are also widely understood. Now add another thaw factor: Rain. A new study that tracked results at a variety of interior Alaska permafrost sites found significant soil thaw in after rainy summers. In the most vulnerable of the sites, there was a one-to-one relationship — a centimeter of rain produced a centimeter of thaw, reported the study, published in the Nature journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.