Big Thaw: Permafrost worldwide contains twice the carbon already stored in the atmosphere
Image: Flickr/subarcticmike
As the climate warms, thawing permafrost could have a major impact on the world's climate, but that potential is overlooked in many climate models and studies, warns a new report from the U.N. Environment Programme.
The analysis, released as the latest round of U.N. climate talks began in Doha, Qatar, recommends that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change undertake a special report on permafrost and its role in climate change. The UNEP report also urges countries with significant permafrost deposits -- including the United States -- to improve their monitoring of the frozen ground.
Data gathered by existing monitoring networks "indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may have already started," the U.N. report says.
That is a concern because permafrost, which covers 24 percent of exposed Northern Hemisphere land, contains about 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon -- roughly twice the amount currently stored in the atmosphere.
With Arctic temperatures warming twice as fast as the global average, scientists estimate thawing permafrost could release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere through the end of the century with significant climate impacts.
Thawing permafrost could emit 43 billion to 135 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2100, and 246 billion to 415 billion metric tons of CO2 by 2200, the U.N. report says.
"Uncertainties are large, but emissions from thawing permafrost could start within the next few decades and continue for several centuries, influencing both short-term climate (before 2100) and long-term climate (after 2100)," it continues.
Despite that risk, current climate models do not include the risk of emissions from thawing permafrost, the UNEP analysis warned.
As a consequence, the projections of future climate change made in the IPCC's next major report, due next year, "are likely to be biased on the low side," the new report says, which could hamper efforts to hold man-made warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial conditions.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
See what we're tweeting about
20 Comments
Add CommentAnother more accurate assessment would be that current climate models are unable to accurately reflect observed conditions. In spite of that the editors of Scientific American believe society should assume that we understand what conditions will result from it being slightly warmer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCommenters should do a little due diligence before going on off-topic rants. Please keep comments to the permafrost and the UNEP report:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.unep.org/pdf/permafrost.pdf
Superficial comments by Sisko and Shoskin could be provided as evidence that they are not serious about climate science. That is, they essentially always say the same thing regardless of the topic. Sisko appears only to be interested of what has happened between 1997 and 2012 as evidence against AGW (see Daily Mail article by David Rose, 13 Oct 2012).
Are projections permafrost degradation by the year 2100 unrealistic? Will permafrost area increase or decrease by the year 2100? Here are the projections for the loss in permafrost area by the year 2100 referenced in the UNEP report:
Marchenko et al. [2008] 7%
Schaefer et al. [2011] 20-39%
Euskirchen et al. [2006] 27%
Saito et al. [2007] 40-57%
Eliseev et al. [2009] 65-80%
Lawrence and Slater [2010] 73-88%
Lawrence et al. [2008] 80-85%
Zhang et al. [2008a] 16-20%
Schneider von Deimling et al. [2011] 16-46%
Zhang et al. [2008] 21-24%
Koven et al. [2011] 30%
Lawrence and Slater [2005] 60-90%
How much carbon will be released by 2100 as a result of thawing permafrost?
Schneider von Deimling et al. 43 gigaton
Koven et al. (2011) 80 gigaton
Schuur et al. (2009) 110 gigaton
Schaefer et al. (2011) 135 gigaton
Why not refute these papers (the source of data in this article) rather than always dwelling on the same old superficial arguments about hockey sticks, conspiracies, and warmist zombies?
Whether permafrost is melting or not is hardly the issue. The issue fundamentally is systemic bias in SCIAM printing every piece of garbage about CO2 being responsible for every conceivable phenomenon while ignoring vastly accumulating evidence of chicanery, incompetence and outright fraud committed by Alarmists intent on pushing their agenda.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow boring would articles of melting ice be if there was no moralistic overtone or villain? Pretty boring. But throw in an imaginary catastrophe, link it to human weakness and poof! Nobel Prize!
I think that the dismantling of Mann's Hockey Stick and the implications of its discredit on the Alarmist Movement would be a fascinating article WRT to science bias, political interference in science, diverted funding from worthy causes, or a whole host of other issues.
Too bad SCIAM would never print anything like that.
Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA more effective way of exposing a "systematic bias" in SciAm's reporting would be to offer evidence that refutes Schaefer, et al. Please point us to all the research that SciAm is systematically ignoring.
The topic here is about the amount of CO2 that will be released from thawing permafrost. Estimates range from 43 to 135 gigatons by the year 2100 AD. Please reference a paper that says otherwise. The concern is that most climate models do not account for this CO2. Obviously, if these numbers are much too large, then there would not be a need to include this CO2 in climate models.
Any reference to "Mann's Hockey Stickey" is a red herring. It's not relevant to this topic because the "hockey stick" is a temperature graph for the last thousand years (i.e. past temperature data, not projections of future temperatures). Whether or not Mann's temperature data for the past 1000 years is wrong has nothing to do with forecasting the release of CO2 from permafrost over the next 87 years.
Yes, Cramer they spout nothing but lies, climate lies if you like. Their tune never changes. It does not matter that all their claims have been repeatedly debunked by many different sources. They do not care. They simply like to leave their stink wherever they can get away with it. They have been such constant poster here that it has now become my habit to ignore them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello, Robbie boy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem incapable of looking at the rapidly changing climate patterns that the world has been suffering from in the past decade or so. We are literally at the tipping point on global warming. We either fix it now, or we kiss the world as we know it good-bye.
Maybe we can get the homeopathy people to mix some CO2 and methane in water and dilute it down a few hundred times to make it REALLY powerful, then spray it into the atmosphere ("like cures like..."), and THAT will solve the problem!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBring back Penrod!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeats me why people who don't like science come there to make silly comments. Perhaps they have some other agenda they are pushing. Don't shot the messenger just cause you don't like the message.....deal with the facts!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[1] I seem to remember that CH4 is released in great quantities by melting permafrost, but this article talks only about CO2. The CH4 problem, if true, is presumably much more serious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[2] Some writers talk about (roughly) "it would not be so bad if the temperature by 2100 goes up XX-degrees", but would be an overwhelming disaster if it went up YY-degrees." Of course, both may be wrong. But all signs now (storms, droughts, fires, trees-burning-and-releasing-CO2, permafrost melting, etc.) make it appear that the EFFECTS of climate change are not waiting politely for 2100 to spring on human-kind (or, if you will, on life-on-earth) but are already with us, in small does compared to what is direly predicted.
I happen to believe the predictions and am strangely terrified, since I am 74 years old and will not (I hope) live to see what actually happens, even by 2025-2030 (most likely). I am terrified because our government and china's appear to be accelerating the emissions rather than cutting them back.
Sorry if this comment is not "scientific".
This report DOES mention methane:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUNITED NATIONS, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Northern Hemisphere permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and could significantly amplify global warming, a U.N. report says.
Should thawing accelerate as expected with climate change, the report by the U.N. Environment Program said, it will accelerate hazards of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from warming permafrost which have not so far been included in climate-prediction modeling.
Экстремальное изменение погоды это показатель изменение климата,глобальное изменение климата это показатель изменения альбедо Земли (антропогенный фактор и увеличение количества метана в атмосфере это ускорители процесса изменения климата),изменение альбедо (это также изменит солнечную радиацию) это показатель деформации земной коры и изменения формы Земли,изменение формы Земли это показатель изменения процессов в ядре Земли.Изменение формы Земли изменит скорость вращения Земли вокруг свое оси и угловой наклон,эти изменения нарушат равновесие в системе Земля-Луна.Нарушение в системе Земля-Луна проявит себя во время лунного затмения в северном полушарии.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, methane hydrate releases are terrifying. We pump CO2 into the air, which heats the Earth, melting permafrost and Arctic ice, releasing methane hydrates, which cause even more rapid warming, and whoops, here we are in the Early Triassic, and wow, Brazil is literally too hot to support animal life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this""" What happened the last time it melted? Did we fry? No."""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMostly because we weren't around. BTW, the last time global warming of a magnitude anywhere near that of our current warming event happened, biodiversity took something like a 30% hit (Wikipedia the PETM). The time before that, 90% of life on Earth died out, and the tropics were literally too hot to support animal life for about five million years afterwards.
"""If you stop and think about it (Burt Rutan did the calculations, Google it) every bit of fossil fuel in the world could be burnt and we still would not reach that threshold that exists in our own houses. """
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBurt Rutan is an aerospace engineer, not a climatologist. I will take his climate ideas with the same credence as I do those of any other amateur. Also, his calculations were wrong (not to mention underestimating the warming power of CO2).
"""Only irrational Dark Age magical thinking continues to imbue trace gases with mystical and evil properties."""
Only irrational and Dark Age magical thinking continues to believe that screwing around and releasing thousands of tons of gases into the atmosphere will have no effect. Seriously, would you be complaining if we were taking something out, like, say, argon (which, unlike CO2, really is a trace gas)?
Shoshin asks, "What happened the last time [the permafrost] melted? Did we fry? No. Oops, sorry. Logic again."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShoshin will have to specify to what permafrost that he is referring. And to whom he is referring (who is "we")?
Much of the higher latitude permafrost in the Yukon is dated to 700,000 years ago. Some arctic permafrost dates to 3 million years ago. Antarctic permafrost dates to 35 million years ago. [please correct these numbers if they are wrong]
I am having difficulty comprehending any of Shoshin's comments or questions. I only find them to be irrational.
He also asks if CO2 was not a greenhouse gas, would there be any interest in this article? Then he talks of a "'Philosopher's Stone' that amplifies CO2's effects."
Shoshin seems to believe that the only evidence scientists have that CO2 "might" be causing global warming is coincidental (as in correlation vs causation).
Does he not understand that CO2 and H2O absorbs infrared radiation whereas N2 and O2 do not (as in triatomic vs diatomic)? And this is simple 19th century physics (Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius)?
I think we better start growing more and harvesting less trees to help take up the CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCo2 is already absorbing as much infrared as is available from the Sun. Adding more Co2 will make exceedingly little difference as no more heat in the appropriate frequencies is available to be trapped. If the Sun somehow increases it's infrared output, then the additional CO2 may make a difference, but as you Alarmists keep saying, that big bright thing in the sky has nothing to do with Global Warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs to concrete evidence of the so far elusive CO2 amplifier, please provide it. You would be the first, and I would then be in full support of you being awarded a real Nobel Prize.
Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe amount of errors in your comments exhausts me. I'll take a few minutes to dabble on a few points.
Most of the IR absorbed by CO2 is emmitted from the Earth not the Sun. Once you understand that we can go on to a discussion of saturation, Beer's law, etc. These points regarding saturation were first raised by Knut Angstrom over 100 years ago and have been being debunked ever since.
What you are defining as a "CO2 amplifier" remains unclear in the context of your comments. I usually define amplifier as a positive feedback effect. There are plenty of positive feedback effects -- one being the topic of this article, permafrost.
Also, your definition of "concrete evidence" is probably different than mine. Some people believe there is no "conrete evidence" of anything, even that the Earth is an oblate spheroid or man landing on the moon. Offering any evidence to you would most like lead to an argument of pure semantics. It might be better for you to offer evidence for your beliefs. That way, I can better understand your standard for "concrete evidence." Otherwise, this dialogue is not much better than a game of Whac-a-mole.
No, I did not proof read my last comment before posting (e.g. I know emitted only has one m).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this