"Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes—all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains—a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change.

Now new research published in Nature Geoscience shows that such frozen Arctic soil holds nearly twice as much of the organic material that gives rise to planet-warming greenhouse gases as previously estimated.

"When the air temperature rises two to three degrees, the Arctic tundra would switch from a carbon sink to a carbon source," says soil scientist Chien-Lu Ping of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "The greater the carbon stores, the greater the impact it causes," including even faster warming in the already changing Arctic.

Previous estimates of the amount of carbon stored in Arctic soil had relied on samples taken outside of the region or those from only the topmost layer—accessible by shovel. As a result, these surveys failed to account for organic material deeper down.

So Ping and his colleagues used portable jackhammers to chisel their way three feet (a meter) or more into a variety of landscapes in the Alaskan Arctic, 117 sites in all. Excavating these soil pits, the scientists found that permafrost areas were quickly storing plants and other organic material deep beneath the surface, as much as 10 feet (three meters) in some cases.

The key is the thawing and freezing of the surface layer as well as some of the unique soil formations of the Arctic region, according to Ping. "Frost boils"—deep soil that roils to the surface like bubbles in a boiling pot—and ground cracks allow topsoil to slip below the surface and come into contact with the deep permafrost. This keeps the soil from decomposing—and thereby traps more than 98 petagrams (98 million billion grams) of carbon, or one sixth the total in the atmosphere, according to biogeochemist Christian Beer of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany.

Warming could release most of that carbon. "Warming will increase the decomposition rate of the soil organic matter and more carbon dioxide will be generated," Ping notes. And "warming will thaw the permafrost and release the sequestered carbon," which will also decompose faster in the warmer temperatures.

It remains unclear how much of an impact such thawing permafrost will ultimately have and the sites sampled were solely in North America—leaving the vast tundra of northern Europe and Siberia to be an educated guess. But it is clear that adding even a fraction of the carbon dioxide or methane stored in Arctic soil to the atmosphere would have a "significant impact on Earth's climate," Beer says.

13 Comments

1. 1. Jim Fisher 05:33 PM 8/26/08

   Living in the Pacific NW, it was interesting to watch how our weather changed during the recent Olympics. Up until the start, we had unseasonably hot weather, then within a few days of the opening in Beijing, it was unseasonably cool and raining here. As is raining, hard. Now, the event is over, the sky is clearing and, the temperature is rising. All because the Chinese stopped emitting particulate matter at the start of the Olympics, and now are back to emitting at their pre-Olympic rates, which effects the rate at which photons hit the surface of the ocean which controls evaporation rates which controls how much water is pumped into the atmosphere and how much rain falls in Oregon.
   
   How does this apply to permafrost? Global warming is the wrong name for what's happening. We've perturbed the planet's balance to the point that it is highly likely that whatever steps we take now will have little effect. As James Lovelock pointed out in a 2007 speech, the last time the Earth's environment was this perturbed it took 200,000 years for the planet's "pysiology" to return to the original baseline. Even if we continue to emit particulate matter to moderate the termperature and eliminate all additional CO2 dumping, the temperature of the planet will continue to rise before spiking -- which will likely release some if not all of the CO2 held in the Arctic permafrost, which, of course, will stimulate higher temps, release more CO2, etc., ad nauseum. Chances of stopping this given human global activity are exceedingly slim.
   
   So, hello Welcome to the 8th Extinction. Please fasten your seat belts and get ready for the ride of a lifetime. For those of you who follow Faux News, the simple explanation is: We're screwed. Feel free to relay that to O'Reilly in just those words.

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2. 2. dennisj 06:03 PM 8/26/08

   Over hte years I have noticed an increase of runoff from permafrost areas around Fairbanks. I Hat the oppertunity to run a reconnaissance solils investigation from near the Yukon Bridge to the North Slope during the early development of the pipe line haul road. probably 80% of the route was underlain by permafrost that varied from ice rich ( more than saturated) to nearly pure white ice to depth of 4 to five meters besides being a significant store for the carbon mentioned in your article. it is, if reflected world wide a considerable volume of water that seems to be overlooked in the calculations of future sea levels ( note, the great continental glaciers are not gone, they ae just hiding under the moss.)

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3. 3. dobermanmacleod 01:21 AM 8/27/08

   Methane is 70 times more powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 over 20 years. Permafrost contains vast amounts of trapped methane, and 50% of the surface permafrost is expected to melt by 2050. We are already over 500 ppm CO2 equivalent:
   
   "Stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gases below about 400 ppm of CO2 equivalent is required to keep the global temperature increase likely less than 2C above pre-industrial temperature." --Report of Working Group 1 of the IPCC, 2007, p. 828
   
   There is a very inexpensive simple way to immediately cool the Earth: just put a small amount of aerosol into the air to dim the sun. We won't be able to stop rapid ecosystem collapse without geoengineering.
   
   "Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07
   
   We've been warming by 0.2 C/decade the last two decades according to the IPCC. A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007.
   
   "Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming" --Leemans and Eickhout (2004), "Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change," Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228

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4. 4. Jim Fisher 11:58 AM 8/27/08

   dobermanmacleod -- Thanks for your view -- excellent information. At times I feel like crying at the stupidity of so many about what is happening, especially "experts" like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh who treat this as a strictly political issue.
   
   Admittedly, the solution requires political action, but the problem is best expressed in popular scientific terms. Lovelock's books have helped me understand a very complex set of date and issues. Can't say I'm a master of it by any means, but I am gaining a clearer understanding day by day.
   
   I am convinced that we're about knee deep in the 8th Extinction, headed for waist high by 2012 or so and up to our necks by 2040 or so. I can't shake the feeling that it's going to get very ugly over the next five years, especially when the rabble rousers mentioned above start blaming the messengers -- the scientists.
   
   Still, like the story line in Asimov's Foundation series, I feel and hope fervently that we can create enclaves of knowledge and technical sophistication. Perhaps another image is that of the Irish monks who dissappeared into the wild carrying with them as much of the collected wisdom of humanity as they could carry. Could you imagine what it would be like today without their efforts?
   
   Thanks again -- I'm looking up your references. Thanks to Dennis for his observations. Thanks to David for his article.

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5. 5. dobermanmacleod 04:07 AM 8/28/08

   RED ALERT: reports of melting oceanic methane hydrate (a MUCH larger carbon sink than permafrost on land):
   
   "...Researchers were investigating "alarming" reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea, said Greenpeace climate scientist Bill Hare, who was attending a climate conference in Ghana. Giant burps of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, is a long feared effect of warming in the Arctic that would accelerate warming even more, according to scientists." --"Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on record," AP, 27 Aug '08
   
   "In the permafrost bottom of the 200-meter-deep sea, enormous stores of gas hydrates lie dormant in mighty frozen layers of sediment. The carbon content of the ice-and-methane mixture here is estimated at 540 billion tons. "This submarine hydrate was considered stable until now," says the Russian biogeochemist Natalia Shakhova, currently a guest scientist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who is also a member of the Pacific Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok.
   
   The permafrost has grown porous, says Shakhova, and already the shelf sea has become "a source of methane passing into the atmosphere." The Russian scientists have estimated what might happen when this Siberian permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes. They believe the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelvefold. "The result would be catastrophic global warming," say the scientists." --"A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia," Spiegle, 17 April '08
   
   Remember, a sudden release of just 10 billion tons of methane would be like doubling the CO2 level in the air for 20 years!
   

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6. 6. Jim Fisher 05:09 PM 8/28/08

   Oy freaking vey. Just finished reading the Honolulu Declaration of the Coral Reef Task Force (Christian Sciencd Monitor 27 Aug 08) -- about acidification of the oceans resulting, of course, in a 0.1 degree f increase in ocean temperatures and the effect this has on coral reef formation. We're screwed aren't we? As in, really, really screwed. Thanks for the info. jimfisher_4@msn.com

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7. 7. Paul Edgar 10:04 PM 8/28/08

   What interest me in this discussion is what is behind any discusssion of the Artic areas. Having lived in Alaska for 18-years, I have found most discussions about the north slope have to do more about misinformation and special interests who want to galvanize special interests to gain money and future political clout. To be sure the climate has warmed and we must do everything reasonable to reverse all human causes that are reasonably possible. But if the disucssion is about weather we we can and should drill for oil and gas in a small foot-print in AWAR, as if to connect ANWAR to Global Warming with it the effect of drilling at ANWAR to climate change to this would be disingenuous. What we need is balance in how we address critical environmental issues and the cash-flow that is needed that comes a healthy economy still requires the use of oil and natural gas. If Alaska natural resources can save our country, the USA from giving a couple trillion dollars to foreign countries that would be smart.

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8. 8. dobermanmacleod 01:14 AM 8/29/08

   I've come to the uncomfortable conclusion that submarine permafrost is by far the biggest concern (per the previous posting). There is NO WAY we can cut our emissions enough to compensate for increased natural emissions as the Earth inevitably warms.
   
   "Processes that would normally regulate climate are being driven to amplify warming. Such feedbacks, as well as the inertia of the Earth system — and that of our response — make it doubtful that any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for carbon dieting will (work). What is needed is a fundamental cure." --Dr James Lovelock
   
   The CO2(e) is 455 ppm now (i.e. all the greenhouse gas in the air expressed in CO2 equivalence):
   
   "Stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gases below about 400 ppm of CO2 equivalent is required to keep the global temperature increase likely less than 2C above pre-industrial temperature." --Report of Working Group 1 of the IPCC, 2007, p. 828
   
   Here is what Climate Code Red says:
   
   --Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.
   
   --There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to "thermal inertia", or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.
   
   --If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don't increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).
   
   --Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assuming very optimistically that emissions don't increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, nor for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.
   
   There is very little choice: inorder to avoid a climate catastrope we must use geoengineering to save the ecosystems from rapid collapse. As I've said in previous postings, although it isn't a silver bullet solution, there is a simple and cheap way to immediately cool down the surface of the Earth: just add a little sun dimming aerosol to the upper atmosphere.
   
   

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9. 9. xjyxjy 10:04 AM 9/2/08

   Well, I see the problem and part at least of the solution as being rooted in the present class priorities of our worldwide economic system and hence individual societies. As long as capitalist interests dominate we'll see corporate profits and the military expenditure and research to defend these profits (against rivals and the more terrifying threat of working class revolution) continue to dominate what we produce and what we consume ie what we invest in as humanity.
   
   A different society based on generalizing the planning now restricted to global corporations like IBM, Exxon etc, and on massive research reoriented from destructive to constructive ends, would make our chances much greater. The big late capitalist (ie imperialist) powers and their many client states will do everything in their POWER to prevent this. It's not so much a question of science - that's clear enough now - but of POWER in and over society and of massive technological investment to research and develop the tools we need try and stabilize our environment.
   
   The discussion of scientific advances in understanding and the wilful denial of and resistance to these is useful but way inadequate. The focus must change to the interests supporting massive ignorance and disinformation. And to the massive military and media power that allows them to continue destroying our world.

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10. 10. dobermanmacleod in reply to xjyxjy 02:00 AM 9/3/08

    xjyxjy, frankly I think part of the problem of people denying global warming is their insistence upon using irrelivant paradigms. Capitalism isn't the problem, it is the climate heating up. Yeah, I get it, you are advocating a different society. I suggest you concentrate on solving global warming instead of trying to change world-wide society so fundamentally. By the way, on a more realistic tone:
    
    "...Researchers were investigating "alarming" reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea& --"Arctic sea ice drops to 2nd lowest level on record," AP, 27 Aug '08
    
    A very large amount of Siberian permafrost is under the ocean, an area six times the size of Germany containing about 540 billion tons of carbon. That submarine permafrost is perilously close to thawing. Three to 12 kilometers from the coast the sea sediment is just below freezing. The permafrost has grown porous, there is a loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor, and the surrounding seawater is highly oversaturated with solute methane.
    
    If the Siberian (submarine) permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes, the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelve fold. The result would be catastrophic global warming. --"A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia," Spiegel, 17 April '08

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11. 11. PrairieDweller 10:59 PM 10/4/08

    I'm an industrial electronics tech, not an environmental tech. Part of my problem believing the issue of global climate change is that the news media has weighed in on it with "expert opinions." The news media is not a bastion of truth and honesty and has so muddled the facts I can't believe anyone anymore on this subject no matter who you are or what you have to say on the subject. I think the scientific community has handled this subject very poorly. Handing the story over to mainstream news organizations was an act of utter stupidity. TV destroyed the credibility of the argument. So until such time as I feel its to hot or to cold I don't care anymore.

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12. 12. dennisj2 07:58 PM 8/25/09

    i rand a recon soils program under Miocahle Baker Jr. for Alyesky that took a quick look at the route of the Dalton highway proir to its construction. the perameters that i worked with were essentially to define a problem I limited my sols bores to 4 meters. for a approximately 80 percent of the route i encountered that minimum in most drillholes. in essentaillly all of thes cases, there was frozen ground in excess of saturation in most dcases the samples (after Thawing went from clear water to maybe a small fragment of organic matter. (I know where the great valle glaciers have gone, they are hiding under the moss waiting to come back) we have grat teams following the ice retreat in Antarctia and Greenland not to mention the alaska glaciers and Glacier Part. these are all dramatic events. (Columbia glacier in Valdez Arm has retreated approximately 8 miles since i regularly ran a cruse boat in in 1963 My concern is that; the amount of permafrost that is being converted to liquid water and added to the world water budget is so difficult to measure and so unglamorous that the melting
    resultant may not be included it the climate and flooding calculations. Certainly 70 percent of Alaska and similar portions of Canada and the Russian arctic are experencing the same results. fow records from the seve breat noth flowing river in siberia may give a hin as to what is happening. At any rate, i hope that this catches somone's attention.

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13. 13. Colin L Beadon 07:23 AM 3/5/10

    There is such a blast of comments, for and against global warming, it is becoming difficult to fully appreciate what is the truth, or if the truth actually exists. Every day new data is screened, and screamed, and deemed, all of it highly important-seeming. The clash of politics, big business, save the Earth specialists, surely, somewhere, there is one solemn truth. And yet, though a Christ, or Buddha, should come down and say, " Look, This is the way it really is with the Earth. " Who would all listen ? Who could afford to Listen ?

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