Reports
Permafrost regions (in which the ground is frozen throughout the year) cover 24 % of the northern-hemisphere land surface and hold ~1700 Gt of organic carbon. When it thaws it releases CO2 and CH4, turning a long-term carbon sink into a source and enhancing the greenhouse effect (1, 2). Permafrost d...
| Other Authors: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1030.7116 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2013/02/20/science.1228729.full.pdf |
| Summary: | Permafrost regions (in which the ground is frozen throughout the year) cover 24 % of the northern-hemisphere land surface and hold ~1700 Gt of organic carbon. When it thaws it releases CO2 and CH4, turning a long-term carbon sink into a source and enhancing the greenhouse effect (1, 2). Permafrost degradation also intensifies thermo-karst development, coastline erosion and liquefaction of ground previously cemented by ice. The latter endangers infrastructure including major Siberian oil and gas facilities (3). An ability to predict the extent of future permafrost degra-dation is desirable. Assessing the response of permafrost to changing climate is chal-lenging. Significant warming and thawing of local permafrost conditions are seen in instrumental records during the last 20 years (4) but perma-frost response at regional scale is slow to respond to warming and in-strumental records are insufficient to capture the long-term behavior. To understand the long-term response of permafrost to climate change re- |
|---|