Melting permafrost and global warming

Thirty percent of the Earth's surface is land.  Twenty percent of the land is permafrost. There is over a trillion tons of carbon frozen and buried in the land permafrost.  More than half the land covered by the topmost layer of permafrost will probably thaw by 2050.

Permafrost ice contains a lot of methane (CH4) from past decomposition. CH4 is 70 times stronger than CO2 over 20 years. Decomposition will speed up when the permafrost thaws.  A very large release of CH4 when the ice melts, followed by large chronic emission of CO2 and CH4.

A frozen peat bog in western Siberia the size of France and Germany put together contains about 500 billion tons of carbon.  Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the Earth, with an increase in average temperature of about 3C in the last 40 years.

Even more Siberian permafrost is under the ocean, an area six times the size of Germany containing about 540 billion tons of carbon. That submarine permafrost is perilously close to thawing. Three to 12 kilometers from the coast the sea sediment is just below freezing.  The permafrost has grown porous, there is a loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor, and the surrounding seawater is highly oversaturated with solute methane.

"...Researchers were investigating "alarming" reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea…" --"Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on record," AP, 27 Aug '08

The CH4 level in the air never reached 750 parts per billion (ppb) the last million years, but is now 1,780 ppb. Currently there is about 3.5 billion tons of CH4 in the air; 10 billion more would be like doubling the CO2 level for 20 years. Since the future amount of CH4 (or CO2) entering the air from melting permafrost isn't known, it is not included at all in current climate models. The UN warned this year natural CH4 emissions are a major climate wild card.

"If the Siberian (submarine) permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes, the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelve fold. The result would be catastrophic global warming."  --"A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia," Spiegel, 17 April '08

Extremely hot temperatures increase faster than the average temperature, and the consequences of very high temperatures are severe. Highs before the end of the century are forecasted (not considering melting permafrost) to reach 50C below the 30th parallel; the US and southern Europe will probably exceed 40C, with a 10% chance of exceeding 48C every decade.

"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

There is a very inexpensive simple way to immediately cool the Earth: just put a small amount of aerosol into the air to dim the sun. We won't be able to stop rapid ecosystem collapse without geoengineering.  Soon melting permafrost will overwhelm any cuts we make to our emissions.

"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." --Dr James Lovelock, August 2008

Brad Arnold
St Louis Park, MN
USA

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