Abrupt Permafrost Thaw w/ Merritt Turetsky—Collapse & carbon release—Radio Ecoshock 2019-06-05
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 2019-06-28

A faster permafrost thaw means even the worst scenarios underestimated the pace and severity of climate change.

Scientists have issued a new warning that greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost in the North could be twice what we thought, as the world warms. Scientist Merritt Turetsky is lead author of the article in the journal Nature “Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release“, published April 30, 2019.

Merritt is Associate Professor & Canada Research Chair, Tier 2 at Canada’s Guelph University and head of the Turetsky Lab. Studying Arctic carbon cycles, northern fires, soils, and peatlands, she is author or co-author of almost 200 peer-reviewed papers. Merritt’s Twitter handle is: “Queenofpeat“.

Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. Episode details at https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/06/abrupt-permafrost-thaw-repetitive-heat-waves.html

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Scientists on Merritt’s team warn that greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost could be twice what current models expect. Formerly all estimates on the amount of carbon dioxide and methane coming out of thawing vegetative matter in the far north were based on a slow general warming. However, there are large areas which contain a lot of frozen water with that soil. These regions can thaw abruptly—and may result in the formation of millions of small ponds and lakes. When vegetation rots below water, the more powerful greenhouse gas methane rises up into the atmosphere. About one-quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere is frozen—that is a vast area that we ignore at our peril!

As Merritt’s team write in Nature:

“Current models of greenhouse-gas release and climate assume that permafrost thaws gradually from the surface downwards. Deeper layers of organic matter are exposed over decades or even centuries, and some models are beginning to track these slow changes.

But models are ignoring an even more troubling problem. Frozen soil doesn’t just lock up carbon—it physically holds the landscape together. Across the Arctic and Boreal regions, permafrost is collapsing suddenly as pockets of ice within it melt. Instead of a few centimeters of soil thawing each year, several meters of soil can become destabilized within days or weeks. The land can sink and be inundated by swelling lakes and wetlands.”

A graphic with that paper says:

“One-fifth of frozen soils at high latitudes are thawing rapidly and becoming unstable, leading to landslides and floods that release carbon into the atmosphere.”

Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to advise governments, did not include this abrupt thaw and formation of gases. Keep in mind, in total there is twice as much carbon locked up in the Arctic than in the atmosphere now. If it was all released, or even a significant fraction, this would dwarf human emissions. There would be nothing we could do to stop it.

However, the IPCC’s “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate“, expected later this year, should contain updated estimates including abrupt permafrost thaw, thanks in part to the Permafrost Carbon Network.

Nothing resembling a total thaw is going to happen in the next few hundred years. It takes time, but permafrost lands containing a lot of frozen water (ice) can melt within a decade (not all of it, but in places). One of those land-types is called “Yedoma“. This is widespread in Russian Siberia, but also in northern Canada and Alaska.

In 2012, I recorded Merritt’s co-author Charles Koven’s presentation to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver. I then interviewed Professor Antoni Lewkowitcz. You can listen to both of those in my program “What If The Permafrost Thaws?”.

My first impression was the study of permafrost in 2012 involved a relatively small group of scientists in North America. That was during the time of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who defunded climate change research. Merritt tells us the Arctic research situation improved in Canada, and in Russia—in fact over 20 countries have representatives in the Permafrost Carbon Network. It’s become a “hot” topic, now that the world is more aware of the grave dangers coming from global warming.

Now we now that greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost become a serious positive feedback loop—where warming creates more gases that lead to more warming. What is needed now, these scientists suggest, is an urgent project to understand and measure greenhouse gases coming from the permafrost.

In permafrost news, Dr. Jaroslav Obu and colleagues from several countries have just released a new map of permafrost. This new tool can help a lot of researchers.