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As climate change melts Arctic permafrost and releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, it is creating a feedback loop that is "certain to trigger additional warming," according to the lead scientist of a new study investigating Arctic methane emissions.
The study released this week examined 71 wetlands across the globe and found that melting permafrost is creating wetlands known as fens, which are unexpectedly emitting large quantities of methane. Over a 100-year timeframe, methane is about 35 times as potent as a climate change-driving greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and over 20 years, it's 84 times more potent.
Methane emissions come from agriculture, fossil fuel production and microbes in wetland soils, among other sources. The study says scientists have assumed that methane emissions from wetlands are high in the tropics, but not necessarily in the Arctic because of the cold temperatures there.
But a spike in global methane concentrations in the atmosphere seen since 2007 can be partly traced back to the formation of fens in areas where permafrost once existed, according to the study, led by University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) biology professor Merritt Turetsky.
The methane emissions stemming from melting permafrost could be critical to determining how fast the climate will change in the future.
Methane emissions are one example of a positive feedback between ecosystems and the climate system, Turetsky said. The permafrost carbon feedback is one of the important and likely consequences of climate change, and it is certain to trigger additional warming.
Warming and thawing permafrost stimulate methane release, which enhances the greenhouse effect, creating a feedback loop, she said.
Even if we ceased all human emissions, permafrost would continue to thaw and release carbon into the atmosphere, Turetsky said. Instead of reducing emissions, we currently are on track with the most dire scenario considered by the IPCC. There is no way to capture emissions from thawing permafrost as this carbon is released from soils across large regions of land in very remote spaces.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected in its fifth assessment on climate change report that the earths average temperatures could warm by as much as 8.64°F above 1986-2005 temperatures if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The natural processes are looping and making it impossible.
Damn Matty you're even worse at this than at hating black people
Damn Matty you're even worse at this than at hating black people
I don't hate black people. At all!
I just point out the double standard society has against whites and how blacks get away with things.
Damn Matty you're even worse at this than at hating black people
I don't hate black people. At all!
I just point out the double standard society has against whites and how blacks get away with things.
Well it's white people fighting you the hardest on climate change Matty. Funny how things work out huh?
I don't hate black people. At all!
I just point out the double standard society has against whites and how blacks get away with things.
Well it's white people fighting you the hardest on climate change Matty. Funny how things work out huh?
Have you bothered to look at the video? The people in it are the top people in their particular disciplines, and what they said there is backed up by articles I have read in peer reviewed scientific journals.
Well it's white people fighting you the hardest on climate change Matty. Funny how things work out huh?
Have you bothered to look at the video? The people in it are the top people in their particular disciplines, and what they said there is backed up by articles I have read in peer reviewed scientific journals.
Oh I know. I'm just not a big Matthew fan.
Have you bothered to look at the video? The people in it are the top people in their particular disciplines, and what they said there is backed up by articles I have read in peer reviewed scientific journals.
Oh I know. I'm just not a big Matthew fan.
We need to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away. People want our government to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away.
We need to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away. People want our government to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away.
But there are no cows in the arctic....
Have you bothered to look at the video? The people in it are the top people in their particular disciplines, and what they said there is backed up by articles I have read in peer reviewed scientific journals.
Oh I know. I'm just not a big Matthew fan.
We need to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away. People want our government to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away.
Oh I know. I'm just not a big Matthew fan.
We need to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away. People want our government to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away.
We need to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away. People want our government to invest more in education, infrastructure, and science to make the black people go away.
That would allow all peoples to advance. What is so wrong with it?
Why not get back on topic? Let's discuss the methane?
The world’s permafrost contains roughly 227 Gigatonnes of carbon – more than one-third of the current amount of carbon in the atmosphere. As permafrost thaws, the decomposing soil releases greenhouse-gas emissions in the form of methane and carbon dioxide, setting up a positive feedback loop that causes temperatures to rise further and thaw more permafrost.
Now a team from the US and Sweden has found that as the thaw proceeds, the organic matter becomes more biodegradable and more likely to produce methane than carbon dioxide. Methane’s greenhouse effect is 33 times larger than that of carbon dioxide.
“As permafrost thaws, the ground thaws, collapses and becomes flooded, and this increasing water inundation leads to changes in surface vegetation,” Suzanne Hodgkins of Florida State University told environmentalresearchweb. “Specifically, Sphagnum moss, which grows in partially thawed semi-wet areas, is replaced by sedges, which grow in fully thawed wet areas. These sedges produce organic matter that has lower concentrations of organic acids and other compounds rich in organically bound oxygen than the organic matter produced by Sphagnum.”
Microbes, particularly those that produce methane, prefer to feed on organic matter low in oxygen-rich compounds. This means that sedges are more biodegradable, and more likely to be converted to methane, than sphagnum moss.
As a result, production of both methane and carbon dioxide increases as permafrost thaws, with methane emissions increasing at a faster rate. “These results imply an increasing greenhouse-gas effect from organic matter decay in thawing permafrost wetlands, which could exacerbate the effects of greenhouse warming from human activities,” said Hodgkins.
To come up with the findings, the teams carried out lab tests on samples from Stordalen Mire, a Swedish peatland north of the Arctic Circle. Extensive permafrost thaw has occurred at the site over the past 40 years.
“This thaw occurs at different rates in different parts of the study site, so that some areas are still frozen while others are fully thawed,” said Hodgkins. “To determine how permafrost thaw affects methane production, we looked at several sites along a gradient of increasing time since onset of thaw. This spatial thaw gradient represents a proxy for the progression of thaw over time.”
In the past, climate models have assumed that permafrost emits a constant mix of methane and carbon dioxide as it thaws. But this research revealed that the ratio of methane to carbon dioxide increases as thaw progresses because of changes in plant growth.
“Prior to this study, we knew that permafrost thaw could be a major climate feedback because thawed organic matter decomposes more rapidly than frozen organic matter, and as the ground collapses and becomes inundated, the soil becomes less exposed to oxygen gas, allowing the microbes that produce methane to thrive,” said Hodgkins. “We found that there is yet another mechanism for increasing methane production with permafrost thaw: changing organic matter chemistry, induced by changing surface vegetation, increases the biodegradability and methane production potential of soil organic matter.”
