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Stubbins
and his colleagues conducted their fieldwork along the Kolyma River
in Siberia, where some streams consist of 100 percent thawed
permafrost. The researchers measured the age, concentration and forms
of carbon in the water. Then they bottled it with a sample of the
local microbes. After two weeks, they measured the changes.
“We
found that decomposition converted 60 percent of the carbon in the
thawed permafrost to carbon dioxide in two weeks,” Stubbins said.
“This shows the permafrost carbon is definitely in a form that can
be used by the microbes.”
Skidaway
researcher exposes impact of Arctic melt
By
Mary Landers
1
May, 2015
As
the planet warms, the doors are being thrown open on a massive
storehouse of carbon in the Arctic, warns University of Georgia
Skidaway Institute of Oceanography researcher Aron Stubbins.
Stubbins
is part of a team investigating how ancient carbon, previously locked
away in Arctic permafrost, is now being released into the atmosphere
and is accelerating man-made warming. The results of the study were
published in Geophysical Research Letters.
The
Arctic stores carbon in its frozen soil — the remnants of plants
and animals that died more than 20,000 years ago. Because this
organic material has been permanently frozen year-round, bacteria
couldn’t ordinarily decompose it the way it does in a warmer
climate.
The
permafrost in the Arctic is like the food in your freezer, Stubbins
said.
“However,
if you allow your food to defrost, eventually bacteria will eat away
at it, causing it to decompose and release carbon dioxide,”
Stubbins said. “The same thing happens to permafrost when it
thaws.”
The
study is the first to report the carbon-dated age of the carbon and
show conclusively that microbes consume the 20,000-year-old dissolved
organic carbon in natural waters, Stubbins said.
Scientists
estimate there’s more than 10 times more carbon in the Arctic soil
than has been put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels since
the start of the Industrial Revolution. That’s two and a half times
more carbon locked away in the Arctic deep freezer than in the
atmosphere today. With a warming climate, that deep freezer is
beginning to thaw, and its long-frozen carbon is beginning to be
released into the environment.
“The
study we did was to look at what happens to that organic carbon when
it is released,” Stubbins said. “Does it get converted to carbon
dioxide, or is it still going to be preserved in some other form?”
Siberian
fieldwork
Stubbins
and his colleagues conducted their fieldwork along the Kolyma River
in Siberia, where some streams consist of 100 percent thawed
permafrost. The researchers measured the age, concentration and forms
of carbon in the water. Then they bottled it with a sample of the
local microbes. After two weeks, they measured the changes.
“We
found that decomposition converted 60 percent of the carbon in the
thawed permafrost to carbon dioxide in two weeks,” Stubbins said.
“This shows the permafrost carbon is definitely in a form that can
be used by the microbes.”
In
fact, the Siberian bacteria loved the melted permafrost.
“Interestingly,
we also found that the unique composition of thawed permafrost carbon
is what makes the material so attractive to microbes,” said lead
author Robert Spencer of Florida State University.
The
study confirmed that the carbon being used by the bacteria hasn’t
been a part of the global carbon cycle in the recent past.
“If
you cut down a tree and burn it, you are simply returning the carbon
in that tree to the atmosphere where the tree originally got it,”
Stubbins said. “However, this is carbon that has been locked away
in a deep-freeze storage for a long time.
“This
is carbon that has been out of the active, natural system for tens of
thousands of years. To reintroduce it into the contemporary system
will have an effect.”
The
process is analogous to the digging up and burning of fossil fuels,
Stubbins said.
“As
the thawing of Arctic soils initiated by global warming results in
emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, there is a positive
feedback loop between warming and CO2 release,” he said. “Burning
fossil fuels has warmed the Arctic and lit the fuse, pushing the
natural system beyond an apparent threshold.
“Today
we know that thawing Arctic soils will accelerate manmade warming. At
what speed and to what extent is still unknown.”
Current
predictions of global warming don’t account for no-longer permanent
permafrost.
“Currently,
this is not a process that shows up in future climate projections; in
fact, permafrost is not even accounted for,” Spencer said.
“Moving
forward, we need to find out how consistent our findings are and to
work with a broader range of scientists to better predict how fast
this process will happen,” Stubbins said.
Activism
For
activists such as Dave Kyler, executive director of the Center for a
Sustainable Coast, the finding provides another reason to curtail the
use of fossil fuels ”as much as possible, as soon as possible.”
He’s
called for a rejection of offshore drilling and of the proposed
Palmetto Pipeline.
“This
added source of carbon will amplify the already accelerating global
rate of greenhouse effects on rising temperature, compounding
disastrous impacts such as sea-level rise, wildfire, drought, crop
loss and ocean acidification,” Kyler said. “This is especially
relevant to coastal Georgia because of our region’s flat terrain
and low elevation, which make us vulnerable to rising sea-level and
storm-surges.
“By
overheating the climate at a faster rate with release of great
amounts of carbon-dioxide, permafrost thaw is likely to raise the
ocean to dangerous levels much sooner. For instance, it could mean a
three-foot rise by 2050 instead of 2100 as previously predicted, or
worse.”
You
Just Lived Through The Earth’s Hottest January-April Since We
Started Keeping Records
Joe
Romm
14
May, 2015
It’s
increasingly likely that 2015 will be the hottest year on record,
possibly by a wide margin.
NASA reported Wednesday
that this was the hottest four-month start (January to April) of any
year on record. This was also the second-warmest April on record in
NASA’s dataset.
The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just
predicted a
90 percent chance that the El Niño it declared in March will last
through the summer and “a greater than 80 percent chance it will
last through 2015.” El Niños generally lead to global temperature
records, as the short-term El Niño warming adds to the underlying
long-term global warming trend.
And
in fact, with April, we have once again broken the record for the
hottest 12 months on record: May 2014 – April 2015. The previous
record was April
2014 – March 2015,
set last month. The record before that was March
2014 – February 2015.
And the equally short-lived record before that was February
2014 – January 2015.
As
we keep breaking records in 2015, our headlines are going to sound
like a … broken record. May has already started out hot, and it is
quite likely next month we will report “The Hottest 5-Month Start
Of Any Year On Record,” and that June 2014 – May 2015 will become
hottest 12 months on record.
This
chart uses a 12-month
moving average,
so we can “see the march of temperature change over time,” rather
than just once every calendar year, as science writer Greg Laden puts
it.
The
global warming trend that made 2014 the
hottest calendar year on record is
continuing. Some climate scientists have said it’s likely we’re
witnessing the start of the long-awaited
jump in
global temperatures — a jump that could be as much as as 0.5°F.
April
was warm across the country and most of the world. That’s clear in
the NASA
global map below
for April temperatures, whose upper range extends to 6.9°C (12.4°F)
above the 1951-1980 average.
Global
temperatures in April vs. 1951-1980 average. Via NASA.
Once
again, it was quite warm last month in Siberia, where the permafrost
is fast becoming the perma-melt. The permafrost contains twice as
much carbon as is currently in the entire atmosphere. The faster it
turns into a significant source of carbon dioxide and methane
emissions, the
more humanity will be penalized for
delaying climate action. The defrosting may
add as much as 1.5°F to
total global warming by 2100 — something that is not factored into
any current climate models.
The last intact section of one of Antarctica's mammoth ice shelves is weakening fast and will likely disintegrate completely in the next few years, contributing further to rising sea levels, according to a NASA study released on Thursday.
The
research focused on a remnant of the so-called Larsen B Ice Shelf,
which has existed for at least 10,000 years but partially collapsed
in 2002. What is left covers about 625 square miles (1,600 square
km), about half the size of Rhode Island.
Honey
bees, critical agents in the pollination of key U.S. crops,
disappeared at a staggering rate over the last year, according to a
new government report that comes as regulators, environmentalists and
agribusinesses try to reverse the losses.
Losses
of managed honey bee colonies hit 42.1 percent from April 2014
through April 2015, up from 34.2 percent for 2013-2014, and the
second-highest annual loss seen, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
said in a report issued on Wednesday.
We
have to be very careful with The Guardian as whilst covering our
climate change catastrophe they have to date been down playing the
severity of the disaster. There is zero chance of us holding the
arbitrary target of 2C as 6C is already baked in and Bill McKibben
suggesting it is possible is disingenuous, not to mention that he
supports nuclear power. There is no carbon budget, we have already
passed to many tipping points and unleashed many positive feedback
loops.
---Kevin
Hester
The
Guardian invites you behind the scenes as we embark on a global
climate change campaign
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