Permafrost Thaw Means Climate Change To Worsen

Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release Study shows 52,000 square miles in rapid decline, with sediment and carbon threatening the surrounding environment and potentially accelerating global warming.

Bob Berwyn, February 28, 2017 (Inside Climate News)

“Huge slabs of Arctic permafrost in northwest Canada are slumping and disintegrating, sending large amounts of carbon-rich mud and silt into streams and rivers…[T]his permafrost decay is affecting 52,000 square miles…[T]he permafrost collapse is intensifying and causing landslides into rivers and lakes that can choke off life downstream, all the way to where the rivers discharge into the Pacific Ocean…Similar large-scale landscape changes are evident across the Arctic including in Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia…Permafrost is land that has been frozen stretching back to the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. As the Arctic warms at twice the global rate, the long-frozen soils thaw and decompose, releasing the trapped greenhouse gases into the air…Scientists estimate that the world's permafrost holds twice as much carbon as the atmosphere…” click here for more

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