Permafrost
thawing could
accelerate global warming,
research says
A
team of researchers lead by Florida State University have found new
evidence that permafrost thawing is releasing large quantities of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere via plants, which could
accelerate warming trends.
8
April, 2014
The
research is featured in the newest edition of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences
.
"We've
known for a while now that permafrost is thawing," said Suzanne
Hodgkins, the lead author on the paper and a doctoral student in
chemical oceanography at Florida State. "But what we've found is
that the associated changes in plant
community composition in
the polar
regions could
lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere
as methane."
Permafrost
is soil that is frozen year round and is typically located in polar
regions. As the world has gotten slightly warmer, that permafrost is
thawing and decomposing, which is producing increased amounts of
methane.
Relative
to carbon
dioxide,
methane has a disproportionately large global warming potential.
Methane is 33 times more effective at warming the Earth on a mass
basis and a century time scale relative to carbon dioxide.
As
the plants break down, they are releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
And if the permafrost melts entirely, there would be five times the
amount of carbon in the atmosphere than there is now, said Jeff
Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography at
Florida State.
"The
world is getting warmer, and the additional release of gas would only
add to our problems," he said.
Chanton
and Hodgkins' work, "Changes in peat chemistry associated with
permafrost thaw increase greenhouse gas production," was funded
by a three-year, $400,000 Department of Energy grant. They traveled
to Sweden multiple times to collect soil samples for the study.
The
research is a multicontinent effort with researchers from North
America, Europe and Australia all contributing to the work.
More
information: Changes
in peat chemistry associated with permafrost thaw increase greenhouse
gas production, PNAS,
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