From Florida State University and the department of we’ve heard all this before comes this story
Researchers: Permafrost thawing could accelerate global warming
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A team of researchers lead by Florida State University have found new evidence that permafrost thawing is releasing large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere via plants, which could accelerate warming trends.
The research is featured in the newest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We’ve known for a while now that permafrost is thawing,” said Suzanne Hodgkins, the lead author on the paper and a doctoral student in chemical oceanography at Florida State. “But what we’ve found is that the associated changes in plant community composition in the polar regions could lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere as methane.”
Permafrost is soil that is frozen year round and is typically located in polar regions. As the world has gotten slightly warmer, that permafrost is thawing and decomposing, which is producing increased amounts of methane.
Relative to carbon dioxide, methane has a disproportionately large global warming potential. Methane is 33 times more effective at warming the Earth on a mass basis and a century time scale relative to carbon dioxide.
As the plants break down, they are releasing carbon into the atmosphere. And if the permafrost melts entirely, there would be five times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere than there is now, said Jeff Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography at Florida State.
“The world is getting warmer, and the additional release of gas would only add to our problems,” he said.
Chanton and Hodgkins’ work, “Changes in peat chemistry associated with permafrost thaw increase greenhouse gas production,” was funded by a three-year, $400,000 Department of Energy grant. They traveled to Sweden multiple times to collect soil samples for the study.
The research is a multicontinent effort with researchers from North America, Europe and Australia all contributing to the work.
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@captainfish,
the impacts of climate change on Bali no doubt.
Personally I think a study of climate change on Key West is in order.
I will repeat my usual comment on this theme: during the previous (Eemian) interglacial the Arctic was much warmer than now (5-10 degrees centigrade), with extensive permafrost melt and forest growing all the way to the Arctic Ocean in Siberia, but methane content in the air was about the same as now.
By the way I wonder why they “traveled to Sweden multiple times to collect soil samples for the study”, since there is practically no permafrost in Sweden, and none at all that is easily accessible. Wouldn’t have made more sense to go to Alaska where there is any amount of permafrost easily available?
Alan Robertson says:
April 8, 2014 at 6:03 am
Yes, they avoided Siberia, where there are Russian scientists based there. And what do they say:
“Indeed above at the surface it has gotten warmer, but that’s just part of a normal cycle. The permafrost is rock hard, And that is how it is going to stay. There’s no talk of thawing.” Michali Grigoryev
http://notrickszone.com/2012/11/19/russian-arctic-scientist-permafrost-changes-due-to-natural-factors-its-going-to-be-colder/
“It seems that the permafrost should be melting if the temperature is rising. However, many areas are witnessing the opposite. The average annual temperature is getting higher, but the permafrost remains and has even started to spread. Why? An important factor is the snow cover. Global warming reduces it, therefore making the heat insulator for the permafrost thinner. Then even weak frosts are enough to freeze the ground deeper below the surface.”
Nikolai Osokin is a glaciologist at the Institute of Geography, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070323/62485608.html
“The Russian Academy of Sciences has found that the annual temperature of soils (with seasonable variations) has been remaining stable despite the increased average annual air temperature caused by climate change. If anything, the depth of seasonal melting has decreased slightly.”
“This is just another scare story . . . This ecological structure is balanced and is not about to harm people with gas discharges.”
Vladimir Melnikov is the director of the world’s only Institute of the Earth’s Cryosphere. The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute is located in the Siberian city of Tyumen and investigates the ways in which ground water becomes ice and permafrost.
“The boundaries of the Russian permafrost zone remain virtually unchanged. At the same time, the permafrost is several hundred meters deep. For methane, other gases and hydrates to escape to the surface, it would have to melt at tremendous depths, which is impossible.”
Yuri Izrael, director of the Institute of Climatology and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050822/41201605-print.html
Ron C. says:
April 8, 2014 at 10:03 am
“The Russian Academy of Sciences has found that the annual temperature of soils (with seasonable variations) has been remaining stable despite the increased average annual air temperature caused by climate change. If anything, the depth of seasonal melting has decreased slightly.”
———————————————————————–
If the surface is melting every year then what caused the buildup of CO2 and CH4 that is now being released?
Anthony and mod, I think it’s time to start a methane concentration monitoring page.
Multiple data sets, emissions, historical proxies…
Permafrost is defined as any material that has been continuously frozen for two or more years. Under that definition, solid rock is considered to be permafrost. Likewise peat moss and tundra, BELOW THE ACTIVE LAYER, are also considered to be permafrost. The active layer freezes and thaws with the seasons. The depth of the active layer depends upon the latitude, southern or northern exposures, vegetation and the nature of the soil.
As with every unsubstantiated, speculative prediction made by alarmists and climate models, there is a grain of truth regarding melting tundra/permafrost releasing stored carbon dioxide. But researchers have discovered that when these melted areas are thawed, the explosion of new growth of vegetation becomes a positive CO2 sink that sequesters carbon dioxide in greater quantities than that released from the thaw. So instead of permafrost melting being a positive warming feedback, it actually becomes a negative feedback – funny how the climate always seems to do that in the end.
Why didn’t this set off runaway warming during other warmings, when the area affected was larger.
Doesn’t this tell us CO2 proxies are bunk?
How does the methane release compare to the total bio mass thawed? I suspect that when that bio-mass froze, an equal amount thawed in massive bio-permafrosts of the SH.
Re: the above propaganda leaflet dropped out of a plane somewhere between Sweden and Florida…
THIS is the only type of response such junk deserves:
Just LOOK at all that “carbon” puffing into the atmosphere. Hm. That happened a long time ago. Hm. Temperatures aren’t going up and up and up….
LOL,
here’s something to put into your pipe and smoke, all you Enviroprofiteers:
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
Puff, puff, toot, toot, off [to the dustbin of history you] go!
*******************************************************************
The REALLY neat thing about stupid articles like this one is the comments below them!
SO MUCH GREAT HUMOR AND WIT (and excellent science!) ABOVE (so little time to acknowledge)…
“… the Sun died!” — Alan the Brit
“dig up the Viking graves…” — Mike McMillan
“permafear” — Charles the Mod (good to see you! #(:))
“Beethoven decomposing” — Kelvin Vaughan
and many others… .
Thanks, everyone!
“Patrick says:
April 8, 2014 at 1:22 am
“Methane is 33 times more effective at warming the Earth on a mass basis and a century time scale relative to carbon dioxide.”
At ~18ppBILLION/v I don’t think so!”
###############
Physics doesnt care what you think.
@ur momisugly John,April 8, 2014 at 4:07 am
And in 10 years, when the warming productions continue to fail, they’ll switch from methane to ????
answer: Oxygen.
@ur momisuglycaptainfish, wanna go halfsies?
“sophocles says:
April 8, 2014 at 1:52 am
You notice the current concentration of methane in parts per BILLION are never mentioned ..
just in case we get the idea that it’s all really rather trivial and nothing to get warmed up about..”
#############
This just in.
The concentration of GCRs is less than methane, therefore they can have no effect
The magnitude of tidal forces on the sun from the planets are really small, therefore they can have no effect.
here is something else where the forces are tiny, but the effect significant
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.4597
which explains this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly
@ur momisugly asybot (12:07pm) lol.
“We are going to EXPLODE!!!!” Can hear it now…
And the Enviroprofiteers will be deeply invested Oxygen-sequestration … they’ll use parts off all those derelict windmills from the early 2000’s that have been just sitting there for decades, blighting the landscape from California to Maine… and build….
Oxygen Suckers
{taxpayer subsidized, of course…}
(kinda nifty little double entendre there hm?, heh, heh, heh — WELL! if I don’t laugh at my own jokes, who will???!!! (smiling))
I read on a blog recently that people in Northern Ontario have given up on their gardens this year as the ground is frozen down to two metres! Ah, well. We shall see what we shall see.
“Steven Mosher says:
April 8, 2014 at 12:06 pm
Physics doesnt care what you think.”
The reality is what I said is true. CH4 at ~1800ppb/v isn’t anything to worry about unless you want to eradicate all termites, healthy forest etc etc living on this rock. Physics dons’t care about that either.
Patrick,
While I understand your sentiment, Physics underlies everything! It’s just that most of the time a good approximation can stand in for the statistical mechanical or quantum mechanical presentation and describe the world “close enough”. Most of the other fields of science build on these approximations for their results, though occasionally a chemist (more often) or biologist (a little less often) will have to go back to the root physics to describe their problems. When you get right down to it everything we experience is a result of the fundamentals of Electromagnetic force, Strong and Weak Nuclear forces and gravity, with the conservation of Mass-Energy, momentum, angular momentum and spin and thermal dynamics/statistical mechanics rounding out the details.
With that said, sometimes people misrepresent physics or simplify it beyond all reckoning.
Physics is a science we use so that *WE* can better understand the physical and real world around us. The physical and real world, outside us and our understanding of it, has no concept of the science of physics.
Russian scientist says…”The average annual temperature is getting higher, but the permafrost remains and has even started to spread. Why? An important factor is the snow cover. Global warming reduces it, therefore making the heat insulator for the permafrost thinner. Then even weak frosts are enough to freeze the ground deeper below the surface”
And yet, NH snow cover has been flat for two decades at least, so , although I agree with him that there is no threat from melting permafrost, the snow cover changes he is referring to are regional and certainly not global.
————————————————————
Mosher is back with his usual cryptic comments that make zero logical sense. “Physics doesnt care what you think.” and the author you critique never said it did, so your comment is meaningless. You then point out that small amounts of something’s have a strong affect. That is irrelevant, and the author never said there is nothing in the universe affected by small amounts of any substance. However in the thread several cogent comments were made about why the small methane increase has no measureable affect on warming. Yet you did not respond to those points so you lose the debate due to your usual habit of irrelevant criticism, and failure to address the actual valid points made.
This is the usual fear mongering. You cannot melt all the permafrost because most of it is hundreds of meters underground. Less than 1% is within 4 m deep. It melts by heat conduction which is very slow. Geothermal gradient is 25 C per 1,000 m depth. Permafrost below 4 m deep has been continuously warmed by heat flowing from 1,000 m deep for several hundred thousand years. Yet it still has not melted completely. To melt it from heat flowing from air above ground, the air temperature must over 25 C. So maybe all the permafrost will melt when Siberia becomes as warm as Hawaii and stay warm for 100,000 years.
Permafrost may be crucial for understanding the current climate change.
So … – although I a little late …
The most important (for me) are those comments (and best I like them):
“… we can dig up some of those Viking farmer graves still locked solid after 800 years.” (Mike McMillan)
“… all the extra warmth and CO2 will make them grow really quickly.” (son of mulder).
“… the High Arctic has the potential to remain a strong C sink …” (Joel O’Bryan)
I would have added this sentence (in paper cited by Joel: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n1/full/nclimate2058.html):
“… warming combined with wetting increased the CO2 sink strength by an order of magnitude. Further, wetting while relocating recently assimilated plant C into the deep soil decreased old C loss …”
“Yes it is not AS old but it is old enough to have significantly depleted 14C.” (Crispin in Waterloo)
That is true – Zimov, 2005. (http://forms.mbl.edu/sjp/pdf/readings/zimov_permafrost2005.pdf): “The 13C/12C isotope ratio of the permafrost reservoir is similar to that of soil, vegetation, and marine biota. Unlike these reservoirs, however, permafrost carbon is depleted in radiocarbon (14C).”
Nowinski (2010, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2886135/): “Radiocarbon ages of heterotrophically respired C ranged from <50 to 235 years BP in July mineral soil samples and from 1,525 to 8,300 years BP in August samples, suggesting that old soil C in permafrost soils may be metabolized upon thawing.”
“There is a lot more carbon in the trees that grow on melted ground than emerges from the frozen biomass, which if one has even half a clue, will be remembered, grew there in a former, warmer, time.”
… and it’s also true.
“But researchers have discovered that when these melted areas are thawed, the explosion of new growth of vegetation becomes a positive CO2 sink that sequesters carbon dioxide in greater quantities than that released from the thaw.” (Ron C.)
The researchers of permafrost (as the authors commented paper) often think too “a straight line” or “exponentially”, but changes may be bell-shaped. These same warming which firstly releases of CO2 and CH4, also “CO2 and CH4” (after some time) begins to remove.
Heterotrophic bacteria grow rapidly, the “tissue autotrophs” initially slower (according to this model: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/58/Cheetah_Baboon_LV.jpg). Described it Zech (2011, http://www.clim-past.net/7/501/2011/cp-7-501-2011.pdf) and Yu (2010,http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/yu2010/yu2010.html): “… results indicate that deep-sea-released CO2 during the early deglacial period (17.5 to 14.5 thousand years ago) was preferentially stored in the atmosphere, whereas during the late deglacial period (14 to 10 thousand years ago), besides contributing to the contemporary atmospheric CO2 rise, a substantial portion of CO2 released from oceans was absorbed by the terrestrial biosphere.”
Wetlands, created after thawing of permafrost, also accumulate huge amounts of C.
Minaeva (2011.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/189567400: “The results show that carbon stocks in mineral soils are many times smaller than in waterlogged soils and an order of magnitude smaller than in bog soils. Mineral and bog soils are characterized by similar rates of carbon accumulation averaged over the entire period of their existence. The highest rate of carbon accumulation has been noted for the soils of waterlogged habitats …”
Pries (2013, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12058/abstract): “Areas with greater thaw also had the greatest primary production. Warming in permafrost ecosystems therefore leads to increased plant and old soil respiration that is initially compensated by increased net primary productivity.”
Is it only “initially”?… and „future increases in old soil respiration will likely outpace productivity, resulting in a positive feedback to climate change?
The strongest (and fast) melted permafrost in the 20’s and 30’s of the XX century (http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/1_Fig.2loss-of-permafrost.png). During this time, the permafrost was a net source of CO2 and CH4. Currently is, and will be, a net sink (despite -notwithstanding the current – as a source – continuous increase gross; increase NPP permafrost was – however – and will be, even faster than the increase permafrost as a source of CO2 and CH4)
Wang (2010. http://m.iopscience.iop.org/1755-1315/9/1/012004/pdf/1755-1315_9_1_012004.pdf): “The uncertainties related to our model simulations are mainly caused by the terrestrial vegetation …”„The rather ABRUPT INCREASE in modeled soil organic carbon after 1975 (Fig. 2c) reflects accelerated CO 2 enhancement of NPP (Fig. 3a) and an ABRUPT INCREASE in litter inputs to the soil system …”
Biosphere of permafrost as a result global warming, so removed from the atmosphere (in the final effect) to the soil (remainders, humus, etc.) huge amounts carbon – much more than permafrost emits.
The second conclusion of the above-cited paper Nowinski (2010): 6-8 thousand. years ago, today melting of permafrost, had to be covered by the vegetation, which now are mineralize …
… as with this period of time (to the present day) have changed the concentration of methane?
… and how varied the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Well, like this:
Changes in the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane over the last 12,000 years. Methane (CH4) data from GRIP ice core, Summit Greenland (Blunier et al., 1995), and CO2 (http://books.nap.edu/books/0309095069/xhtml/images/p2000c604g73001.jpg)
… and the temperature as follows: (http://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott.png , http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/gisp2-apica.gif)
(red line in the first graph, of course, you can omit – it’s typical “apples and oranges” …)
We see that even the ice cores show that from about 7tys. years (with a long-term decline in temperatures up to LIA!) the amount (of atmosphere) of CO2 (and CH4 from 5 thousand. years BP) increased steadily!
(.. well, unless we determine that the credibility of the cores in this case, is too small …)
P. S. This comment (with completed the reference) I will send to the authors of research.