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Melting Siberian permafrost and climate change
photo by Jon Ranson, NASA Science blog
Carbon and methane stored in Siberia’s permafrost are being released as Russia’s Arctic experiences warmer temperatures, which cause the permafrost to recede.
So far there is insufficient data to gauge just what percentage of methane in the atmosphere is a result of particular natural sources such as swamps and melting permafrost. Manmade sources of methane include power generation, rice farming, livestock agriculture and landfills.
From a report by Russia’s BCM News:
The fact is that the permafrost covers millions of kilometers of swamps. While melting, swamps send to the atmosphere tons of methane, which, in turn, leads to more significant changes in the climate. In the pseudoscientific press, this process has already received the name “methane bomb” and “methane flywheel”.
A German/French climate mission plans to launch a methane-detecting satellite into space by 2014. The satellite, named Merlin (Methane Remote Sensing Lidar Mission) will measure methane sources as it orbits the Earth by using light radar (LIDAR).
From a Space Daily article:
The data that the German/French climate satellite will gather from orbit will enable scientists in both countries to draw conclusions about the various different sources of methane emissions. What is the impact of rising levels of energy production? What are the implications when tracts of permafrost release methane as they start to thaw? Above all, what are the implications for our climate?
Researchers from the University of Nevada are also studying how receding permafrost in Russia’s Arctic will affect carbon emissions.
From an article in the University of Nevada News:
We see the permafrost receding hundreds of yards each year, and the ancient carbon from Pleistocene era plants and animals being unleashed into the air, soil and water. Where the carbon goes and how it will affect climate are part of what the team is investigating.
–Sudeep Chandra, University of Nevada faculty member and researcher
According to Chandra, area of the Arctic that they are studying has more stored carbon stored than all the vegetation in the Amazon basin. As Siberia’s permafrost melts, this carbon travels with water into the Arctic Ocean, perhaps contributing to further climate change.
Melting permafrost also has the obvious symptom of causing trees and houses to lean as they lose their frozen foundations.
Tags: arctic, carbon, Climate change, French, German, Lidar, melting, methane, Nevada, permafrost, Russia, satellite, Siberia
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Thanks for the info!
This is one of the risks of “tipping points”, positive feedback loops or “runaway climate change” we hear about. I have read about several different projections and models with different outcomes, but the risks are worrying, whatever the specific details.
Here is what Climate Code Red says:
–Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.
–There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to “thermal inertia”, or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.
–If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don’t increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).
–Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assum ing very optimistically that emissions don’t increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.
By the way: “Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them.” –Dr James Lovelock’s lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. ’07
Let me add, that is WITHOUT even adding in the predictable natural GHG released as the Earth warms (which could be a VERY LARGE amount indeed).