Guardian:Melting of permafrost threatens homes and roads, scientists warn

(This is one of the Global Warming "Tipping Points" that most are over looking.)

Melting of permafrost threatens homes and roads, scientists warn

· Study foresees huge release of carbon by 2100
· Water runoff could affect global currents

David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday December 21, 2005
The Guardian

Global warming could melt almost all of the top layer of Arctic permafrost by the end of the century. Scientists say the thaw would release vast stocks of carbon into the atmosphere, threaten ocean currents and wreck roads and buildings across Canada, Alaska and Russia.

David Lawrence, a climate scientist with the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said: "There's a lot of carbon stored in the soil. If the permafrost does thaw, as our model predicts, it could have a major influence on climate." Thawing permafrost is one of several climate "tipping points" feared by environmental experts, because carbon released by melted soil would accelerate global warming. Permafrost makes up about a quarter of land surface in the northern hemisphere and the upper layer is believed to hold at least 30% of the carbon stored in soil worldwide.

Dr Lawrence said: "In terms of its impact on the global climate, I don't see how it can be good news, but just how bad it is is unclear. It's very difficult to see how we can halt it. We may be able to slow it down."

Dr Lawrence and Andrew Slater, of the University of Colorado's national snow and ice data centre used a computer to simulate how the Arctic permafrost - defined as soil that remains below freezing for at least two years - would react to Earth's changing climate.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1671774,00.html?gusrc=rss>
(more at link above)

we could have something started up there in five to ten years I bet...

but would trying to fix this only lead to a worse problem? We might better try to do something I think

Assuming that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars, power stations and other sources continue to rise, they found the area holding permafrost within about 3.5 meters of the surface will shrink from 4m square miles to a little over 1m square miles by 2050. The area of surface permafrost will shrink further by 2100, to about 400,000 square miles.

A very large amount of methane and carbon dioxide will be released.
This will increase the rate of Global Warming.

This is called a tipping point because things will happen much more rapidly and dramatically than in the recent past.

BIG NOT GOOD !!!!!

..."Natural Gas" it's main or major by-product is Methane, which is abut 20x worst than CO2 as a "Greenhouse Gas," is that true?

as a greenhouse gas. Actually, burning methane is preferable to releasing it into the atmosphere, because it transforms the methane into CO2 and water, and what the heck, at least we got some use out of it.

The methane coming out of the permafrost is almost certainly impossible to capture. So it will simply enter the atmosphere and enhance the greenhouse warming. Not good.

...that the U.K.'s BG is having trouble with: <http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1999443>

LNG leaking into the atmosphere from those ships, not good for a number of reasons.

most of the world fossil's fuels will be used up by 2050 and after years of limited CO2 releases, everything may go back to normal.

According to the fundamentalists the rapture should occur before then

begin to rot. Releasing greenhouse gasses. Can you plant tree fast enough? Can those trees grow fast enough to make up the difference? No!

In Siberia an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres— the size of France and Germany combined— has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age(108). Siberia’s peat bogs have been producing methane since they formed at the end of the last ice age, but most of the gas had been trapped in the permafrost. The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world’s largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. The thaw has greatly accelerated in the past three or four years. Climate scientists warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards. Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. Scientists are particularly concerned about the permafrost, because as it thaws, it reveals bare ground which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the rate at which the permafrost thaws. Projections of the release of methane is to effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to 25% increase in global warming(108).
Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, told a meeting of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that her team had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia. At the hotspots, methane was bubbling to the surface of the permafrost so quickly that it was preventing the surface from freezing over. According to Larry Smith, a hydrologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, the west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70bn tonnes of methane, a quarter of all of the methane stored in the ground around the world(108). A widespread decline in lake abundance and area has occurred in Siberia since 1973, despite slight precipitation increases to the region. The spatial pattern of lake disappearance suggests that thaw and "breaching" of permafrost is driving the observed losses, by enabling rapid lake draining into the subsurface(109).

108) Sergei Kirpotin, Tomsk State University in western Siberia, and Judith Marquand at Oxford University, New Scientist, August 11, 2005; & K. Walter, Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Arctic Research Consortium, 2005 www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/ sep202005/snt1151422005919.asp
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=46372
(109) Science, Vol. 308, Issue 5727, 1429, 3 June 2005, & Disappearing Arctic Lakes L. C. Smith,1* Y. Sheng,2 G. M. MacDonald,1 L. D. Hinzman3