From the UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Using statistically modeled maps drawn from satellite data and other sources, U.S. Geological Survey scientists have projected that the near-surface permafrost that presently underlies 38 percent of boreal and arctic Alaska would be reduced by 16 to 24 percent by the end of the 21st century under widely accepted climate scenarios. Permafrost declines are more likely in central Alaska than northern Alaska.
Northern latitude tundra and boreal forests are experiencing an accelerated warming trend that is greater than in other parts of the world. This warming trend degrades permafrost, defined as ground that stays below freezing for at least two consecutive years. Some of the adverse impacts of melting permafrost are changing pathways of ground and surface water, interruptions of regional transportation, and the release to the atmosphere of previously stored carbon.
“A warming climate is affecting the Arctic in the most complex ways,” said Virginia Burkett, USGS Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change. “Understanding the current distribution of permafrost and estimating where it is likely to disappear are key factors in predicting the future responses of northern ecosystems to climate change.”
In addition to developing maps of near-surface permafrost distributions, the researchers developed maps of maximum thaw depth, or active-layer depth, and provided uncertainty estimates. Future permafrost distribution probabilities, based on future climate scenarios produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), were also estimated by the USGS scientists. Widely used IPCC climate scenarios anticipate varied levels of climate mitigation action by the global community.
These future projections of permafrost distribution, however, did not include other possible future disturbances in the future, such as wildland fires. In general, the results support concerns about permafrost carbon becoming available to decomposition and greenhouse gas emission.
The research has been published in Remote Sensing of Environment. The current near-surface permafrost map is available via ScienceBase.
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It’s the electronic version of straight edge forecasting.
under widely accepted climate scenarios.
Meanwhile in the real world….
In the real world there are cycles of different length and magnitude and then there are irregular long cycles lacking enough turning points to model. Modelers are always looking for ways to step around the data shortcomings of these cycles without an honest admission of the data issues and implications.
+1…
I wonder how much weight the models give to the oceanic and solar influences we are close to seeing.
In fact it’s so complex that we’ll have to draw a straight line through our 20y of data and extrapolate it 80 years hence. Normally such outrageous extrapolation would be decried as irresponsible in any other science but , hey, this is climatology !!
This type of BS makes me so angry. As a geologist, I can tell you there are two types of geologists, those who work to try and tell you what is happening and those who work for government to tell you whatever its political agenda might be on that day.
Obama’s legacy demands a promise of imminent Thermageddon from the geological Establishment in government and he gets it, likewise the same applies for the GISS temperature statistics. Government ‘science’ has become so corrupted by political agendas that it has become worthless, crying “Unicorn, Unicorn!” continuously is only a convincing argument to the gullible and the serial greenies.
Why is it that 2100 is when everything is going to happen; apparently all at once ??
I’d like to stick around till then just to watch; well so long as I can continue fishing in the meantime, so the time doesn’t count against me.
g
Doomsdayers just love to use the millenial years of the Christian calendar for their prophesies.
…they (the predictorates extraordinaire) get paid today, however; will be but a pile of dust in 2100. not likely will have to return their funding received for fraudulent work. We could make headstones for them today reflecting such. lol
As if somehow our 10 based decimal system has any bearing on when doomsday will happen.
I hit the ‘Donate’ button at least once a year in the hopes that WUWT will still be hosted (on whatever they’ve got then) as a record of this shame.
All those guys making those “predictions” will be long gone and therefore not accountable.
People like James Hanson were warning and making dire predictions about global warming this and climate that back in the 1980’s. None of these dire predictions has occurred and none of it appears to be in mankind’s near future. I recall that one scientist predicted that we would be experiencing winters without snow and NY winters would resemble Atlanta normal winter. Well since the year 2000, most of the northern parts of the US have experienced severe winters. Last year NOAA or NASA had a map of January showing areas that were 5 degrees below normal as depicted as “near normal”. Can you image that!
In 10 years this scam will be exposed for with it is. I just wish I could speed up the clock.
Is loss of permafrost bad?
Actually, yes, it would be bad if it were happening. On the north slope permafrost is critical to many biological processes and modern technological efforts. If it melts under a pipeline resting on it, the line is suddenly resting in a marsh. That could lead some really ugly spills of the line were broken by movement of footings as they settle or sink.
If only there were time to adapt. Oh, wait…
Duster seems to me that resetting footings and rerouting pipelines would fall into the category of shovel ready jobs that the President is so fond of.
Sounds to me like the USGS, sad to say, has been infiltrated and captured by radical leftists warmistas just as other federal agencies have, e.g. National Park Service, NOAA, EPA, DOE, NAS, etc. and we are now seeing the results. This is especially sad to me as I used to work with USGS databases and they were national treasures.
It’s basic Mathematics. They are all funded by the GovMINT. If they don’t tow the line, carry the water of CAGW, they get defunded. Carry the water, spread the religion and money remains available for pay raises across the board.
Anyone with half a brain realizes that the greatest source of funding in the world is the U.S. Government with unlimited borrowing power. 18Trillion in debt and still growing. We have the best Global Warming Mythology money can buy.
I hope this is not too peripherally related, but when I visited the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities in Juneau in August 2011, I was not yet paying attention to Climate Science, but I remember fondly an entire week exchanging DOT-to-DOT ideas on monitoring vs. repair (on a $few budget), etc., and the discussions of permafrost, a really interesting problem for bridge maintenance way up north (I live way down south in Oregon, at 45 deg N, only half-way to the North Pole), never had a single hint of anything other than natural and cyclical variation. In fact, the regular, cyclical nature of ‘living’ permafrost is what makes coping with it in Alaska both possible to contemplate (the fact that it is natural gives us at least the hope of some practical understanding) and to accommodate (in the form of extreme-cold-adapted maintenance practices, plus plenty of innovations when permafrost cycles affect specific bridges particularly violently). The “permafrost” in question is obviously not particularly permanent, and its annual cycling causes a lot of problems to built infrastructure. But its annual disappearance in the places where it cycles was never a topic of independent concern.
My impression looking back is that the actual climate in the US’s largest state has been given the practical role as the natural substrate on which the highway system plays, and that the “game” is well understood. Alaska plays rough, but fairly, and puts huge demands on the human-side players, but through intelligent, highly practical work, ADOT keeps on doing what it has been perfecting for many decades.
I would have thought an good engineer would desing a footing/foundation for the pipeline on a once in 50/100 year melt of the permafrost, which clearly could happen! In the Uk we design for wind-loads in the once in 50/100year storm that could, & does, & has, happened, albeit with Human safety in mind!
Don,
Looks to a Brit that the ADOT has been adapting – doing a jolly tough job jolly well!
Auto
No and yes. Yes, for the reason stated by Duster. And no, because the release of carbon is a natural and necessary process. There’s not enough information in this article. But one thing is absolutely certain – global warming is not a catastrophe and does not need more taxes to lower what’s already at 0.8% and self-correcting. Make it two things – CO2 is good for Earth and the environment and has its own automatic process of eliminating emissions through ITS OWN pathways. The fanatic claims again both climate change and CO2 are merely schemes to raise taxes and double the return on investment of the wealthy elite who are heavily invested in “green” energy. One has to be very rich to afford the apparatus and equipment to produce solar and wind energy. Their gain is that after their initial investment, the cost of the energy decreases because the rest of us are paying two and three times for natural energy – coal, gas and fossil energy – the natural energy required to run their alternative energy sources is greater than the output. No change in this Earth or environment will be from people. We’re just the ones paying the scam artists for their phony alternatives.
I sometimes see climate skeptics complaining that mainstream climate scientists attribute magical powers to CO2.
Cuts both ways:
“CO2 is good for Earth and the environment and has its own automatic process of eliminating emissions through ITS OWN pathways.”
Looks magical to me.
Multidecadal increase in North Atlantic coccolithophores and the potential role of rising CO2
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/11/24/science.aaa8026
Ads the rate 9of release of CO2 from the oceans is proportional to the difference in partial pressure of CO2 in the ocean surface and the atmosphere (Henry’s law) then if more CO2 is put into the atmosphere by man, won’t less enter the atmosphere from the ocean?
David, CO2 is good for plants. That’s been proven.
What’s magical about pointing that out?
That warmer weather is good for plants, animals and people has also been proven.
What’s magical about pointing that out?
Plants absorb CO2 when they grow.
What’s magical about pointing that out?
iirc in some spots its 2000 feet deep near coast so the movement of it melting could be bad.
its a surface structure issue collapsing issue.
The dead zone of the arctic would burst forth as a biotic zone. That pesky life is so opportunistic!!!
Yes, besides the issues of pipeline, road and utility pole problems, a lot of methane is sequestered under the permafrost. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so it getting released is not a good thing.
perhaps we should shut down all the “wet” rice paddies.
Who told you it’s not a good thing? You parrot nonsense.
Actual science has shown that microbes eat the released CO2 before it can reach the atmosphere.
Even if it does reach the atmosphere, methane is very quickly broken down.
Please go peddle your myths someplace else.
Chris,
If methane is released, and helps with the ‘greenhouse effect’, and average temperatures rise [mostly in Arctic and temperate areas, and mostly at night], will that be wholly disadvantageous?
I can see it won’t be wholly advantageous, as certain pests, not frost-resistant, will manage to stagger through some slightly warmer winters, then will wreak slightly more damage in the subsequent spring/summer.
But ‘not a good thing’ – what are the undisputed pros and cons, and what are the disputed ones, please?
Auto – looking for knowledge.
Projections based on model outputs.
Guesses based upon fantasy.
Therefore, surely, the sky is falling?
We already know that. And now we know the ground is falling. With any luck it will be net neutral.
If the surface permafrost were to melt, then plants and shrubs would grow.
The plants and shrubs would then shade the ground, slowing if not eliminating the loss of any more permafrost.
and absorbing CO2!
MarkW,
You are spot on. There was an earlier WUWT post about permafrost thawing due to peat fires blackening the surface. I thought it might be interesting to see if I could find studies about the natural succession that occurs after fires in the arctic. It turned out there were a number of variables (including beavers) but sooner or later the progression worked it way through willow, alder, poplar, black spruce until a climax forest of mostly white spruce was achieved, even if it was dwarfed and scrubby. One interesting thing was that in the earlier stages the sun hit the forest floor and permafrost retreated, but in the later stages the evergreens so shaded the forest floor that the permafrost came back.
On other words, global temperatures didn’t matter as much as whether it was locally shady or not.
Yeah, ground cover is important. I used to do a lot of utilities work in mid to northern Canada. I was continually surprised at how far south we would run into permafrost in shaded areas and areas with lots of moss build up. Dig under a foot of moss, and there would be ice lenses everywhere.
Look how far south discontinuous permafrost goes in Canada – 50N. In Asia it goes even farther south.
(See figure 2 in the article referenced below.)
This is a good article with soil temperature profiles for anyone interested:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppp.690/full
Figure 2 is an eye-opening map. Thanks.
Just for interest from the report I mentioned, I don’t think there is much to worry about:
“Permafrost temperatures measured across northern North America have almost all increased over the past two to three decades. The magnitude of the change varies, being less in warmer permafrost (>−2°C) than in colder permafrost. Based on these trends, it will take decades to centuries for colder permafrost to reach the thawing point while warmer permafrost is already undergoing internal thaw at temperatures below 0°C.” (my bold)
I wonder what the “masked areas” are?
Looks like the masked areas are mountainous areas and ice fields which could be colored blue ie. permafrost areas.
I am surprised they didn’t shout “Beware! the Methane Bomb”. The problem I have with that is some 800 years ago, most of that permafrost thawed, so any methane would be just that formed from the plant decay over that 800 years. (note: warmer in medieval warm period, Roman warm period, Minoan Warm period…etc.) There really shouldn’t be that much methane in that surface permafrost.
Also, wouldn’t that open up interior land in Alaska to agriculture? (At least for fast growing crops.)
Recent studies have shown that very little methane is produced when the permafrost melts. Bacteria eat up the organics before methane can be formed.
More fantasy-land model forecasts. You’ve seen how accurate government models have been so far.
“widely accepted climate scenarios”. Widely accepted by whom?
I always read that as ‘wildly accepted’, so take from that what you will.
By those who widely accept them of course, but you’re right. Who ARE “they?”
“They” are “THE AUTHORITIES”, of course.
Well they are of course 97% of all scientists.
g
What’s not to like about permafrost or its loss. I have driven on a concrete Alaskan freeway (1967) that you couldn’t drive more than 25 mph on, because of permafrost buckling of the roadway.
Well you could go faster that 25, but not ON the freeway; in the air for most of the time.
Good riddance to it. Getting rid of permafrost is like getting rid of desert, both of which should occur in a warmer world (with more humidity, more active tropical rain belt, etc.).
But methinks none of the above will happen.
What is a “widely-accepted climate scenario,” anyway? Has there ever been such a thing?
It’s like teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages. Faith based belief buoyed with fear of gong to hell for eating meat on Fridays and guilt for feeding your impoverished family instead of feeding the collection basket on Sunday.
CAGW is Religious Doctrine as widely accepted climate scenarios.
Of course they do. The warming goodness is already baked in. All they have to do is twiddle a dial here, twist a knob there, and voila! Climate change: so easy a caveman could do it (apologies to cavemen).
and Geico commercials LOL
All very interesting if the ‘widely accepted climate scenarios’ weren’t the output from unvalidated and inaccurate models.
Perhaps WUWT could publish the temperature station data (both actual and “adjusted”) for Fairbanks and other stations in that area, if any.
I think an even better idea would be to crowd source a new weather station for Barrow, located well away from any artificial sources of heat.
Yeah, I wanted to look at the existing station data for Barrow except they charge $150 to get access to the Barrow historical data. (I wanted to plot it up to compare to similar latitude stations in Canada but I didn’t want to pay the 150 bucks so I didn’t do it.) However, being on the ocean, the marine temperatures are likely the controlling factors for Barrow like other stations along coastal areas.
Maritime or not, there’s no way that the ocean is causing the ~5 degree mean temperature increase over the last few years. They’re right off an ocean that typically experiences an annual freeze and thaw cycle – there’s no way that ocean’s mean temperature has deviated more than a fraction of a degree from its previous nominal value, or you’d not see ice at all in winter.
After thousands of years of permafrost “loss,” suddenly this is a crisis?
2 degrees of increase = more abundant and cheaper crops to feed the world’s poor, less Humans dying from cold due to lack of electricity for heating AND less Humans dying from burning cow shit to cook food ! How do these people wake up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror ?? Do they really have no shame ?? pathetic….And that is only IF there is warming….
Yes, Marcus. But the mosquitoes…
. . .I , personally, have never taken the time to eat ” Chocolate covered mosquito’s “, BUT I am told they are a much needed delicacy in Africa where people are actually starving because there is a Chocolate shortage due to lack of energy !!!!
And yes , I believe you are ” TheLastDemocrat “..JFK was my hero at one time !!!
You mean the mosquitoes that self aggrandizing liberals hold telethons to combat with nets while 10’s of thousands die because they outlawed DDT? The exact same kind of pseudo-science that drives the Global Warming Catastrophe and ignores real science and real solutions to real problems in place of the make believe kind? Just want to make sure we are talking about the same mosquitoes TLD..
Well mosquitos have been eating humans for thousands of years. Now it’s time for us to eat them.
And you don’t need the chocolate. just deep fry them.
Taste just like chicken.
Africa is also good for carmellized locusts. Delicious.
g
Hey George, come on, I’m trying to eat dinner here ….
If frost need only be 2 years old to be called permafrost then how old is the permafrost that is projected to be lost?
Jimmyyy , totally irrelevant question ~ They are talking about Liberal permafrost, which requires daily doses of ” reinforcement ” from their masters !! Unlike Conservative Permafrost , which allows themselves to admit that Mother Nature is the boss !! Sad, sad story….snarc…..
You got me, how old was the perma-drought that used to be in Texas?
Wait! wrong buzzword…
And since this will be caused by the 520,000 Megawatts of new COAL plants in India and the 560,000 Megawatts of new COAL plants in China adding all of that CO2 to the atmosphere how much will they pay the USA for the problems they caused?
Maybe life in Alaska would be a little more comfortable if that were to happen. Has anybody asked them whether they would mind.
If they wanted to be more comfortable they could move. They like it that way. That’s why they are there!
What should happen with all these predictions/projections is that the pensions of everyone involved be halved until their prediction timescale has passed. If they are correct +-10% gie them their full pension. if they are wrong give them no pension.
Having trouble with my language tonight. I must be tired
What happens when your models only include ruler-based projections without the subsequent negative feedbacks (like the formation of bogs over once frozen areas with all the plant life and carbon sequestration that goes along with them)? Behold, the USGS has those answers.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
1. It’s just a prediction and, as usual, one at a safe distance so nobody will ever know if they were right (or even remember this).
2. There is no permafrost in the Amazon rain forest and that doesn’t seem to be a problem. Why should I get worked up?
Translation…we think that in the future everything isn’t going to be the same as it is now! Run! Run! Hair on fire!
I read somewhere that Alaska had around 5x the usual amount of wild fires/ forest fires this year. I wonder how much melted permafrost and how much more arctic sea ice melt there has been due to fire and black carbon from the fires. I haven’t seen anything about it, besides the usual arctic doomsday articles.
I wonder if the permafrost melted, would that allow the water to seep into the ground instead of pooling?
I do not accept the so called “widely-accepted climate scenario,” known as Alaskan permafrost “loss.” If this prediction doesn’t come true, someone will have to be stoned. Based on this prediction, most in the USGS are “stoned” already.
Especially the interns, or “terns”, the motto being “no tern shall be left unstoned”.
“no tern shall be left unstoned”
The Audubon society might object.
The Audobon Society might object, but NORML strongly endorses this position.