Thawing permafrost can result in the loss of terrain, as seen in this image where part of the coastal bluff along Drew Point, Alaska, has collapsed into the ocean.Credits: Benjamin Jones, USGS
Scientists are turning to a combination of data collected from the air, land, and space to get a more complete picture of how climate change is affecting the planet’s frozen regions.
Trapped within Earth’s permafrost – ground that remains frozen for a minimum of two years – are untold quantities of greenhouse gases, microbes, and chemicals, including the now-banned pesticide DDT. As the planet warms, permafrost is thawing at an increasing rate, and scientists face a host of uncertainties when trying to determine the potential effects of the thaw.
A paper published earlier this year in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment looked at the current state of permafrost research. Along with highlighting conclusions about permafrost thaw, the paper focuses on how researchers are seeking to address the questions surrounding it.
Infrastructure is already affected: Thawing permafrost has led to giant sinkholes, slumping telephone poles, damaged roads and runways, and toppled trees. More difficult to see is what has been trapped in permafrost’s mix of soil, ice, and dead organic matter. Research has looked at how chemicals like DDT and microbes – some of which have been frozen for thousands, if not millions, of years – could be released from thawing permafrost.
Then there is thawing permafrost’s effect on the planet’s carbon: Arctic permafrost alone holds an estimated 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon, including methane and carbon dioxide. That’s roughly 51 times the amount of carbon the world released as fossil fuel emissions in 2019. Plant matter frozen in permafrost doesn’t decay, but when permafrost thaws, microbes within the dead plant material start to break the matter down, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
“Current models predict that we’ll see a pulse of carbon released from the permafrost to the atmosphere within the next hundred years, potentially sooner,” said Kimberley Miner, a climate researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and lead author of the paper. But key details – such as the quantity, specific source, and duration of the carbon release – remain unclear.
The worst-case scenario is if all the carbon dioxide and methane were released within a very short time, like a couple of years. Another scenario involves the gradual release of carbon. With more information, scientists hope to better understand the likelihood of either scenario.
While the review paper found that Earth’s polar regions are warming the fastest, it was less conclusive on how increased carbon emissions could drive drier or wetter conditions in the Arctic. What is more certain is that changes in the Arctic and Antarctic will cascade to lower latitudes. Earth’s polar regions help stabilize the planet’s climate. They help drive the transfer of heat from the equator toward higher latitudes, resulting in atmospheric circulation that powers the jet stream and other currents. A warmer, permafrost-free Arctic could have untold consequences for Earth’s weather and climate.
An Integrated Approach
To understand the effects of the thaw scientists are increasingly turning to integrated Earth observations from the ground, the air, and space – techniques outlined in the paper. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.
Ground measurements, for example, provide precise monitoring of changes in a localized area, while airborne and space-based measurements can cover vast areas. Ground and airborne measurements focus on the specific time they were collected, whereas satellites constantly monitor Earth – although they can be limited by things such as cloud cover, the time of day, or the eventual end of a satellite mission.
The hope is that using measurements from a combination of platforms will help scientists create a fuller picture of changes at the poles, where permafrost is thawing the fastest.
Miner is working with colleagues on the ground to characterize the microbes frozen in permafrost, while others are using airborne instruments to measure emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane. In addition, airborne and satellite missions can help to pinpoint emissions hotspots in permafrost regions.
There are also satellite missions in the pipeline that will provide carbon emissions data with greater resolution. The ESA (European Space Agency) Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission will map changes in land cover and help monitor soil properties and water quality. NASA’s Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) mission will also use satellite-based imaging spectroscopy to collect data on research areas including plants and their health; changes to the land related to events like landslides and volcanic eruptions; and snow and ice accumulation, melt, and brightness (which is related to how much heat is reflected back into space).
SBG is the focus area of one of several future Earth science missions that make up NASA’s Earth System Observatory. Together, these satellites will provide a 3D, holistic view of Earth, from its surface through the atmosphere. They will provide information on subjects including climate change, natural hazards, extreme storms, water availability, and agriculture.
“Everyone is racing as fast as they can to understand what’s going on at the poles,” said Miner. “The more we understand, the better prepared we will be for the future.”
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
An old scare updated.
Beat me to it, this yet another regurgitated lie.
Simple question for the authors: why was there no catastrophe last time the permafrost melted during the Holocene?
Lived in Alaska for 35 years. In the late 70’s, before all the climate scare, “drunken trees and telephone poles” were not uncommon. They were called drunken because they were leaning due to permafrost thawing. Near the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, the Department of Transportation was estimated to have place 14 feet of asphalt into a sinkhole over a period years. They finally fixed the problem in the mid 1980’s. This is nothing new.
Yes, & it has the word ‘could’ in the headline. It ‘could’ not as well.
Wait just a minute lads. I learned quite a lot from this JPL sourced Nature review paper: Scientists are turning to a combination of data collected from the air, land, and space to get a more complete picture; current models predict that we’ll see a pulse of carbon released from the permafrost to the atmosphere within the next hundred years, potentially sooner; a warmer, permafrost-free Arctic could have untold consequences for Earth’s weather and climate; scientists face a host of uncertainties when trying to determine the potential effects of the thaw; chemicals like DDT and microbes – some of which have been frozen for thousands, if not millions, of years – could be released from thawing permafrost; Miner is working with colleagues on the ground to characterize the microbes; key details – such as the quantity, specific source, and duration of the carbon release – remain unclear; scientists create a fuller picture of changes at the poles, where permafrost is thawing the fastest [faster no doubt than in Texas or Nicaragua]; but what is more certain is that changes in the Arctic and Antarctic will cascade to lower latitudes.
While this is certainly to date the very model of an untold story, the prize insight that has me aglow is worthy of the woke leadership of Vice President of the U.S. of A. Ms. Kamala Harris as well as her former boss Governor Gavin Newsom of California: “The more we understand, the better prepared we will be for the future.”
Could
People “could” stop publishing this warmist nonsense.
It “could” happen… we just need smarter people.
It “could” get warmer.
It “is” getting colder.
“Is” trumps “could”.
“Cold” kills. “Warm” doesn’t, not much.
“Cold” trumps “warm”.
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf.
More rubbish. More “could”.
More junk disguised as “stience”
I would argue that today the term “science” is being used as some kind of authority dictate of facts and knowledge. Real science is not this. It is not “settled” as Al Gore says or “set” as Andrew Dessler says.
The purpose of science is to improve our knowledge of the universe and to help us learn how things work, but it is more of a process for doing so than a reference that one looks to for the correct answer.
Long story short. Use of “could” is fine in science. “Could” concerns the language of a hypothesis, part of the scientific process. From that aspect, the use of “could” here is probably OK. That doesn’t necessarily preclude the work from being junk science, which it probably is.
It’s junk science when they start out by assuming things not in evidence.
All of Human-caused Climate Change science is based on things not in evidence. All of it assumes that CO2 warms the atmosphere enough to cause the climate to change, and all of it assumes that warming will continue to increase as long as CO2 amounts in the atmosphere increase.
Yet, today, CO2 amounts are increasing, but the temperatures are cooling. The alarmists assume temperatures will rise continuosly because of CO2. That’s not happening. The alarmists are assuming too much.
If temperatures don’t continue to rise, then all their speculation is just that, speculation. Unsubstantiatted speculation.
This is climate science today: A Huge Edifice built on temperature record fraud and on unsubstantiated speculation based on that temperature record fraud.
All of it assumes that CO2 warms the atmosphere enough to cause the climate to change, and all of it assumes that warming will continue to increase as long as CO2 amounts in the atmosphere increase.
________________________________________________
Assumption implies innocence. Assuming something is an error, we are not dealing with people who are in error, we are dealing with people who have a plan. “Worse than previously thought” is already the answer that Miner, Turetsky, Malina, Bartsch, Tamminen, McGuire, Fix, Sweeney, Elder & Miller have ready to go. They just have to write it up and make it look sciency.
I expect they will manage to find a trace of DDT and then all they have to do is hunt for birds nest with a cracked egg, or maybe manufacture one and they’ll be off and running to the nearest reporter.
“Assumption implies innocence. Assuming something is an error, we are not dealing with people who are in error, we are dealing with people who have a plan.”
Some of them have a plan and some of them are True Gullible Believers, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.
Having rolled the bones and read the tea leaves we predict that we’ll see a pulse of carbon released from the permafrost to the atmosphere within the next hundred years, potentially sooner”
At least the name is funny – Kimberley Miner
She forgot Chicken guts, and mojo bones .
SCIENCE!!🙄
Kimberley “research grant funding” Miner
“’Current models predict that we’ll see a pulse of carbon released from the permafrost to the atmosphere within the next hundred years, potentially sooner,’ said Kimberley Miner, a climate researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and lead author of the paper.”
Oh no!! Not a modeled “pulse of carbon”!
Apparently, “Kimberley Miner, a climate researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and lead author of the paper” does not know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide. Oy vey!!!
No reason to read the moronic NASA press release any further.
Regards,
Bob
?? But I thought all the increase in atmospheric CO2 came from human fossil fuel.
Are they now saying there are other large sources, due to natural warming. 😉
“…changes at the poles, where permafrost is thawing the fastest.”
It isn’t you know. There is no permafrost at or near either pole.
Fortunately, the permafrost near the equators is safe.
Good point. 🙂
“….including the now-banned pesticide DDT…..”
Hawhaahawhaha…
Well, right the North Pole is ice and water, but under the South Pole there is land above sea level… No?
microbes and plants are symbioitic – if the microbes wake up, so do the plants.
The very fact that there is ‘carbon’ wihin the permafrost means that, and contratry to what most people here think/beleive, the creation of soil organic carbon is an accretion process.
iow the plants can accumulate carbon faster than the microbes can release it.
Let’s face it, there wouldm’t even be any microbes if that were the case – parasites don’t kill their hosts.
This is not difficult science.
That NASA, of all people on this planet don’t know that and can’t see it happening daily in all their ordinary sorts of lives speaks volumes about how much trouble Western Science and Civilisation is now in.
We really are heading full-tilt into our own extinction – and no-one else to blame for it but ourselves
“This is not difficult science.”
It is for the post-modern scientist.
“– parasites don’t kill their hosts.”
Trepanazomes?
In fact, virtually all parasites kill their hosts – eventually. All a parasite needs to do is to ensure that the host lives long enough to complete its own life cycle. Beyond that it doesn’t care.
If you want an extreme example, consider the parasitic wasps which lay their eggs in caterpillars. Their larvae eat the caterpillar while keeping it alive until they pupate. Nice, eh?
Great confusions, Peta! The soil microbes are not parasites; nor pathogens. A few parasite and pathogen species can survive in soil for limited periods: they are not “competitive” to the soil microbial flora and are naturally eliminated.
Most of the soil microbes (fungi, bacteria, algae,…) are decomposers, i.e., make their living on the dead and decomposing bodies of animals and plants (or parts of plants: dead roots, fallen dead leaves and branches,…). They are a very important link in the chain of assimilation of inorganic substances into living organisms and their turn over to inorganics after death.
Nice of you to go around insulting everybody, just because we don’t buy into the nonsense that you preach. Pretty much everybody here is well aware of the symbiosis between plants and soil microbes.
already responsible for at least one anthrax outbreak…
Anthrax Outbreak In Russia Thought To Be Result Of Thawing Permafrost : Goats and Soda : NPR
The permafrost thawed once before, and not all that long ago, Griffie. Find something else to wet your pants over.
Love that tree stump evidence!
And yet another lie spewed by the lie spewing liar.
“already responsible for at least one anthrax outbreak…”
Already responsible? From your, er, link…
“Thought To Be Result Of Thawing Permafrost”
I suggest you brush up on your English comprehension, griff.
Yes, it looks like Griff is jumping to conclusions.
or maybe….“Speculated To Be….”
The article you referenced Griff says that a theory of the cause is the thawing of an anthrax-infected reindeer carcass frozen “many decades ago” that the people came in contact with. The article does not say what caused the infection of the reindeer many decades ago. Global cooling perhaps?
griff, have you read and paid attention to that tiny word “thought” or are you dyslexic?
griff doesn’t read past the headlines. Ever.
griff FORGETS!!!!!!!
This little dust-up is from 2016. Does not anybody else remember this one?????
By 2019, the Russians had come clean as to the source of the anthrax.
Is anybody remembering this yet?
The anthrax source was, to nobody’s surprise, a military bio-lab. Surprise!!!! (not).
griff did not remember.
Thought…..
Has it ever occurred to you that the Permafrost line used to be 1200 miles to the south 20,000 years ago?
So, when the permafrost line receded 1200 miles north, that is when the avian mammoth virus was released, endangering all the mammoths that had not become extinct — along with the giant ground sloths.
I guess nowadays NASA will hire anyone with a sheepskin.
So the warmth that allowed that layer of peat and vegetation to grow on top of the ice is totally different from the warmth that raised the sea-level high enough to erode the margins?
Yeah, totally makes sense.
If this is true, what downsides are there for Russia?
They get lots of arable land instead of useless permafrost. The chemicals will soon wash away.
As we cannot influence Russia to forgo this boon we must recognise that we cannot force them to mitigate against CO2 release. We have used all our levers to try and save Ukraine.
If the Russian don’t do it then we can’t over-mitigate to compensate. The planet doesn’t care which sovereign member of the UN the CO2 comes from.
So, if this is right, we need to abandon mitigation policies immediately and focus on the economy in order to adapt.
“We have used all our levers to try and save Ukraine.”
Maybe their levers had a lot to do with bringing this about?
“There is more harm in the Village than is dreamt of.” – No. 6
The biggest downside for Russia is a huge part of the country will sink some unknown depth.
Yes, we know, it is worse than we expected!… perhaps even twice or thrice worse than we (i.e., they, the authors) expected…
(if it is, why do they say that “it can” instead of “it will”?)
The academic emphasis on the CO2 “theory” of global warming overlooks the scrutiny required to dismiss the other arguments… namely natural variability, which, along with the glacial responses to the Earth’s orbital/axial cycles includes solar activity, the fluid dynamics for both ocean and atmosphere and the influence of the equator to pole temperature gradients.
They (climate academics), if they are serious and for their study to be legitimate they need to report the extent of permafrost retreat in previous warm periods, especially 1910-1945. But they don’t.
IMHO these people are just doing their jobs, which is padding the consensus narrative. Climate science is funding dependent so first principles can be overlooked.
“They (climate academics), if they are serious and for their study to be legitimate they need to report the extent of permafrost retreat in previous warm periods, especially 1910-1945. But they don’t.”
Excellent point.
It was just as warm back then and permafrost didn’t present any unusal aspects. The highpoint of 1934, in the United States was 0.5C warmer than 1998 and 2016, and would be the equivalent of our hitting the dreaded “1.5C above the average” tipping point, the alarmists claim is there, but we didn’t tip over in 1934, and we’re doing just fine now climate-wise.
What happened to the permafrost during the 1880’s high temperatures? Apparently nothing.
Thanks Tom.
I listened to the late Freeman Dyson, who remained active to the end, explain to Charlie Rose that the academic climate community “have no evidence”.
Charlie insisted, referring the man-made warming “oh come on, just a little bit”. Freeman responded “Well ok, there might be a little bit, in the colder regions, at night”.
It was enough to satisfy Charlie.
I listened to Bill Nye, when asked about the evidence, explain to Steve Pakin on his program “The Agenda” that it was “the unprecedented rate of warming”.
It was enough to satisfy Steve.
“Unprecedented rate of warming”….how many times have we heard that gem? Do they really think we are that stupid? This is the same mistake M. Mann made with his hockey stick paper.
To say “unprecedented rate of warming” involves comparing the instrumental data with the mush of proxy data. Proxy data, as we all know, lacks the decadal resolution required for a valid comparison.
Now that the CO2 menace is slowly dying, they are trying to resurrect the old permafrost scare, with a new twist.
PS: DDT? Really?
If one was not too cynical, one might wonder how the DDT got up to the arctic.
It has a pretty high molecular weight, 354.5 g/m.
A fairly high melting point, 108.5 deg/C.
So the stuff has no vapor pressure, and will not travel airborne.
Let me take a guess how we get DDT in arctic environmental samples.
1) They are working waaaay down in the parts per trillion regime.
(I have been there, I know this stuff, ppt work is hard.)
2) They generate their calibration curves, then measure their samples.
3) they get lots of positives.
Guess what? All their positive results are the results of contamination and cross-contamination from DDT in the lab. Been there, done that. By the way, did I mention that part per trillion work is hard?
Just one batch of improperly cleaned/prepped glassware is all it takes and you will have all the positive results your little heart desires.
These are biologists and worse, environmental science types. Do they care about the chemistry standards for ultra clean work, QC checks, and verification. No, no and no. I have seen all of this a million times. They do not care at all. A little reflection on the system leads them to understand that with proper standards for ultra clean work, they might not get their dramatic results at all. This makes them even *less* interested.
I have seen enough of this stuff in my time. I will NEVER trust *any chemical analysis* that comes out of a biology lab.
YEP, my FIRST college chemistry lab taught about contamination by having us students synthesize a chemical that was such that almost any contamination was easily visible. I think it was lidocaine. You should have seen all the different shades of yellow and brownish yellow. I believe at the end of the lab semester we were required to synthesize it again for our final ‘test”.
Lesson learned.
TonyL,
What? You want to be a realist?
Being real about lab errors?
Being real discussing them? Goodness!
There will be 6 months banishment for you, smell testing in the mercaptan lab.
Geoff S
I remember reading about a biologist who deliberately contaminated a sample with some wolf DNA, because he knew that there were wolves in the area being sampled, but the field workers hadn’t been able to find any.
DDT, GHG pulse, ocean acidification, Catastrophic Global Heating, tipping point, ancient microbes carried by The Thing. See a pattern here?
Only a few thousand years ago, the glaciers were 2 km thick above where the permafrost now exists. In addition, the permafrost line has moved from approximately the US-Can border to the Arctic circle in the last 60 centuries. It’s just Pavlovian dog-slobber from the CC bell-ringers.
There’s lots of permafrost in Alaska’s Yukon River valley but that valley has never undergone continental glaciation, at least during the river’s existence.
True, it appears most of Alaska was just cold without much snow accumulation due to dry westerly winds from Russia. But we don’t really know why there was so much snow further east.
Climate magicians(scam artisans attempting to keep their funding schemes thriving) continue to pull the proverbial blame rabbits out of their behinds.
Meanwhile, the planet goes about its business of doing what the planet does, and has done since creation, changing its landscapes and climate(weather) irregardless of what “man” does with his supposed intelligence.
After 8 decades on this wonderful spinning orb, I have learned to expect whatever the day brings and try not to predict the future climate changes. Might be good advice for all. One day at a time. Man can change his undies, etc. but not much else.
Your humble servant and savant of nothing. JG.
Melting permafrost will release giant bugs—I saw the movie/sarc
Wow, scary. First, Godzilla released from Fukushima and now giant bugs. We are doomed, doomed!
The evil product of 300 years of human industrialization maybe sequestered in that ice! (tongue in cheek). The climate change propaganda machine just keeps pumping regardless of the global crisis, which all seems to serve the same stupid narrative. Could it be because the propaganda impetus and the global crisis is originating from the same dynamic? Could it be that dynamic is the unfolding global power play to control the industrialization, consumerization, commodities and hydrocarbon fuel markets of Eastern Europe and central Asia, now the home of the Great Oxymoronic Communist Oligarchical Empire. Welcome to the grand global reset. Americans have been consuming less and less actual information and sound analysis since 2008 and it has weakened us as a nation. Can anyone under the age of 30 say with certainty and clarity who we are as a country and what we stand for?
We have a lot of trouble envisioning fluidic oscillations of the Arctic ocean because they take longer than a couple of lifetimes. Hence affecting permafrost melt/thaw cycles….
The photo has nothing to do with warming. You can see the ice layer. It is thick and frozen. It is simply a cliff undercut by sea action. Is that from the original paper?
Or old river delta washed out to sea during the Holocene high stand.
Literally stopped reading the above article upon encountering the word “Could” in the articles’s title.
Oh well.
How much crud could a woodchuck upchuck if a woodchuck could upchuck crud?
”An integrated approach” to propaganda.
“Everyone is racing as fast as they can” to get their unearned grant money before the taxpayers catch on to the lies and corruption.
They remind me of little children. It’s like everything is new to them and never ever happened before.
That is probably apt for some of these young, newly-minted PhDs.
Wake me when they publish something on Jet Propulsion.
Under what conceivable conditions could the Arctic flash melt and release all the CO2 and CH4 in two years? Most of the potential CO2 will require microbes to decompose the organic material, which would be impossible in one or two Summers. This is irresponsible scare mongering and not science. I wish JPL would get back to doing what its name says.
Everything in the permafrost is already in the environment…..
What happened when it was even hotter than now during the Medieval and Roman Warmings?
Back then the Permafrost was only temporarily permanent.
Today it’s permanently temporary.
(Or maybe it’s the other way around?)
scientists from princeton who actually went to the arctic to study melting permafrost found a cyanobacteria was released which captured co2 and actually turned melting permafrost into a carbon sink . curiously , this study was not reported by the media
Look on the bright side.
Maybe they’ll release whatever it was that allowed all those tree stumps found under retreating glaciers to regrow!
It’s thawing the fastest at the poles since the only place we have permafrost is close to the north pole.
Not a single word about how much CO2 will be taken up by all the new plants and converted to O2 if/when conditions continue to warm up and the plants get a warmer and longer growing season.
The difference between the CO2 uptake and the CO2 growth is only 2-3 ppm per year. If the growing season were only a little bit longer then CO2 levels would actually drop, year over year.
And we wouldn’t have to freeze in the dark, watching overselves getting thinner to reach Net-Zero like current governments want us too.
Maybe. Because a significant portion of the seasonal ramp-up is the decomposition of detritus from plants. The more plants, the more detritus for fungi and bacteria to convert into CO2.
Permafrost melting at the poles, plural? Evidence of permafrost melting in Antarctica?
And that is an awful lot of meltwater in the picture above. Oh, silly me. It is the ocean and a bit of coastal erosion.
For some reason there was no warning about significant releases of dihydrogen oxide. Dihydrogen oxide is known to be lethal when one gets too large amounts into the lungs.
Guess /xxxx not needed.