http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/02/slumping-arctic-soils-produce-si.html?ref=hp
Picture:This picture shows a thermokarst, which is a slump in land that results from the melting of permafrost. Permafrost is a layer of soil in the Arctic that sits on top of hard layers of ice. When the ice melts, the soil falls down and creates thermokarsts. This is important to understanding this article.
Summary:
Aside from the burning of fossil fuels, automobiles, and all of the other things that cause global warming that we've learned about, there is a new way coming to light in the northern hemisphere. In the Arctic, permafrost (explained above) has fallen into all types of waters due to melting in the north. The soil is then oxidized by bacteria and turned into carbon dioxide. This wouldn't be that big of a deal considering all of the other factors of global warming, but there is one particularly interesting fact about the release of permafrost: it is believed that permafrost, once changed into carbon dioxide, makes up for about 40% of the total carbon dioxide in the air in the north. That's a big number! Once permafrost blends into a thermokarst [failure], the land form releases even more CO2 in short but intense bursts. Through experimentation, scientists have found that the deeper the permafrost falls into the thermokarst, the more carbon dioxide it releases.Vladimir Romanovsky, a
geophysicist, says, "People are really starting to pay serious attention." But since thermokarsts only exist in the north right now, scientists are trying to buy more time for more experiments.
Opinion/Reflection:
It's kind of surprising for me to hear of this new and pretty much unheard of source of global warming. I feel like so much of the time it is forced among students that global warming comes from the melting of ice caps, yet it's never really been explained to me. This cause is actually pretty unconventional the more I think about it. Also, I'm kind of surprised that scientists have been so quick to blame this as a cause of CO2 with hardly any proof. That doesn't make sense to me.
Questions:
1.) How many other major sources of global warming are there that no one really pays attention to? Should we be paying more attention to those as opposed to the overly-publicized ones (i.e. melting of ice caps, automobiles, and burning of fossil fuels)?
2.) Is the amount of money going towards global warming research equivilant to how much research is actually getting done? Or is there a lot of research being done to hardly any money, or vice versa? Do influential people donate money to this?
3.) Could the CO2 in the north due to thermokarsts spread to other parts of the world? If it does, will it make a major impact? How could thermokarsts be stopped, if they even can be?
I think that this topic is very interesting in the sense that nobody really knows that it's happening. The fact that thermokarst is such an unknown topic shows that the people need to be better informed. If thermokarst is making up almost half of the CO2 released in the North (40%), then I think it’s a really big deal. It surprised me that not many people know about this global warming contributor even though it affects the air so much. I personally have heard of permafrost, but never thermokarst, so I gained a lot of knowledge through reading this blog post. This really relates to what we’re doing in class because it has to do with the carbon cycle and how much CO2 is being released into the air. I enjoyed learning about thermokarst through the article and this blog post.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
1. Is there any immediate way that we could keep all of this CO2 from getting into the air? Are there any long-term ways?
2. What’s a good way to get people to realize that thermokarst is a thing and that it’s having an extremely negative effect on our atmosphere?
3. Has anything actually been done to stop the high amounts of CO2 from getting into the atmosphere?
Could the CO2 in the north due to thermokarsts spread to other parts of the world? If it does, will it make a major impact? How could thermokarsts be stopped, if they even can be?
ReplyDeleteYes, the CO2 would definitely spread. Picture a bowl of water. If you drop a drop of food coloring in it, it may remain in one place for a time, but it would spread out to the rest of the water. I would assume that the CO2 from thermokarst failures is already spreading and has already spread out to other parts of the world, or has begun to. Logically, with more CO2 in the atmosphere, the Earth will continue to heat up. This will affect the planet the same way CO2 from factories and burning fossil fuels affects it; the ice caps will melt more quickly, desertification and drought would continue to progress. Since thermokarst failures are the result of soil which is supposed to be permanently frozen unfreezing, if temperatures drop, and global warming stops or is reversed, they will probably no longer occur.
Is there any immediate way that we could keep all of this CO2 from getting into the air? Are there any long-term ways?
In the short term, I don't think there is any way to prevent this, without great expense and effort. In the long term, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, maintaining forests, and using more efficient and greener sources of energy could allow the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to return to normal over a long period of time. This would most likely stop thermokarst failure, since the ice caps would regain mass.
What’s a good way to get people to realize that thermokarst is a thing and that it’s having an extremely negative effect on our atmosphere?
The best way is to do more research and confirm that thermokarst failures are as bad for the environment as the current data suggests. Then, the information should be widely publicized, as much so as, say, the problem of burning fossil fuels or CO2 emissions from cars. This will raise public awareness, so people will be more likely to work on a solution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVKsZhrsAec&feature=youtu.be
ReplyDeleteThis video shows an hour by hour documentation of permafrost melting over a one month period. The effects of melting permafrost is shocking even over the course of a day. You can see the land sliding away as the video progresses. Besides the date and time, other important information is shown at the bottom, such as the temperature at the given time. This video just goes to show how dramatic the effects of melting permafrost are.
Permafrost does not melt... ice melts (it goes through phase change). Permafrost thaws (it does not experience phase change).
DeleteJust imagine, you would not take a frozen chicken out of the freezer and melt it on the counter. The same is true for permafrost.
Hello, my name is Ryan, I am part of the Grass-heads blog group, a student run blog, and we found the article you wrote on the thermokarsts in the arctic and their potentially large contribution to global warming to be very intriguing. Our purpose is to bring recent environmental issues to light, and discuss them together, asking questions, stating our opinions, and asking professionals to elaborate on the topic. Seeing as you know a great deal on this subject, we would be extremely grateful if could talk a bit more about it on our blog. Thank you for your time.
ReplyDeleteSincerely,
Grass-heads blog group
Here is the link to the blog : http://grass-heads.blogspot.com/
Permafrost is very important to people who live in the far north as it provides a very stable ground surface on which many communities have grown over hundreds of years. When the permafrost thaws, the surface become incredibly unstable and may collapse as buried ice melts or flow away like very watery muck. Thawing permafrost and thermokarsts are not causes of climate change, they are symptoms. This is a response to a warming climate. There is a tremendous amount of carbon that has been frozen in the permafrost for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and when the ground thaws, this carbon may be released to the atmosphere as CO2 or methane, which can contribute to the continued warming. Thermokarsts can cause terrible damage to our roads and buildings, but the carbon that is released to the atmosphere affects everyone, so this is a big problem for our whole society.
DeleteYou can find more information here:
http://climate-cryosphere.org/index.php/media-gallery/mediaitem/625-unep-permafrost
This group is off to a great start! Nice work guys
ReplyDeleteAs a previous commenter confirmed, permafrost does not melt, but can thaw.
ReplyDeleteA report I had done and published at (http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112782408/carbon-dioxide-released-by-arctic-permafrost-melt-021213/) shows that global warming is occurring at an unprecedented rate in the Arctic due in part to thermokarst failures. These failures are part of a vicious cycle that is ongoing now in many areas in Alaska, and perhaps widespread in other Boreal regions of the Arctic circle.
For at least hundreds of thousands of years permafrost has locked away dangerous carbons from escaping into the atmosphere, but with the omnipresence of manmade climate change, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels, that carbon is being released as the Sun's energy has the power to rip apart the polar fabric.
As we have warmer climes reaching farther north, sea ice and snowpack get smaller and smaller, allowing the sun to one: get more reflection from northern waters, and two: warm the earth around it with more ease. This warming is contributing to the thermokarst failures, causing the land to slump and slide off, revealing the permafrost layers below.
As the Sun's UV rays penetrate the permafrost, the ground thaws, allowing carbon to escape into the atmosphere. And where the vicious cycle comes into play, is where this carbon now contributes to further warming of earth, potentially causing further thermokarst failures, and adding to further warming.
At this point, it is likely we as a people have no choice but to wait and wonder.
Besides thermokarst failures, there are many other factors driving global warming. Manmade activities are some of the biggest impacters, such as burning fossil fuels, widespread use of CFCs, which have largely been banned, but were popularly used in aerosol through the 1980s, and emissions. Also, deforestation and wildfires are contributing factors.
For more information on global warming see (http://www.redorbit.com/topics/global-warming/)
Lawrence LeBlond
redOrbit.com
*The melting ice in the Arctic is causing less reflectivity rather than more.
Delete