Permafrost thaw won’t run away with Earth’s climate

[kristopher]

Permafrost thaw won’t run away with Earth’s climate: report
But melt could release over 100 billion tonnes of emissions within century
by Meagan Wohlberg


Melting permafrost in the Peel region of the Northwest Territories causes an effect called slumping, where portions of the landscape collapse and pour into nearby waterways. Photo: NWT Geoscience Office

Despite making a contribution of 100 billion tonnes to global warming emissions over the next century, permafrost thaw in the North is not anticipated to cause a catastrophic, runaway feedback loop with respect to climate change, according to a new report.

<snip>

“One of the things we want to emphasize is that we don’t think the permafrost thaw can turn into a runaway feedback loop situation, where it’s self-sustaining and climate change runs amok,” Olefeldt said. “When it comes to climate change, it’s still very much up to human decisions.”

The report finds that around 10 per cent of the carbon stores in frozen permafrost will be released through warming by the end of the century, totalling around 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

In comparison, the combustion of fossil fuels is releasing around 10 billion tonnes per year alone.

Though considerably lower on the order of magnitude, Olefeldt said the impact of permafrost-related carbon emissions must be factored into current climate models being used to shape global policy on climate change....

http://norj.ca/2015/04/permafrost-thaw-wont-run-away-with-earths-climate-report/

[On the Road]

1. The Plan to Do Nothing About the Climate

except force the energy transition before it's ready and wait a century is for some reason considered not only sensible, but the only sensible plan. Taking direct action could reduce the temperature relatively quickly and keep most of those 100 billion tons of carbon in the ground.

The only advantage of the author's approach is to frighten people and mislead them that passivity is the only acceptable way to proceed. This appears to outweigh the importance of global warming itself.

[kristopher]

2. I have no idea what you're talking about.

You sound extremely confused.

[NickB79]

3. Give it a few years, and we'll see "faster than expected" rear it's ugly head again

That said, new scientific information is constantly altering what science knows and can predict about climate change. Just last week, another article published in the Nature Climate Change journal reported that the breakdown of organic materials in warming permafrost actually generates heat, boosting decomposition in a way similar to composting and causing more melting.

“So we don’t know everything,” Olefeldt said. “Even with the projections we have in our article there are large uncertainties.”

[sue4e3]

4. nice to know

[truebrit71]

5. That goes against just about everything else i've read about the permafrost....

.... thawing rapidly....

[kristopher]

6. It sounds like a pretty solid study

It's also common for a great deal of distortion to enter the picture between the actual research and the reporting on the research. This piece on their Nature article is from the university of one of the researchers, so it passed a review by that researcher.

[mackdaddy]

7. Not addressed in article: How much of "carbon" release will be Methane vs CO2?

Methane is initially a much more active green house gas. Initially 80x that of CO2 which it eventually breaks down into. I have seen numbers that over 100 years, about 20x CO2.

If it were all CO2, then we are talking about 10 years of our current man made emissions over the next 100 years. If mostly methane though then it could be like 200 to 800 years of our current emissions added to the next 100 years??

This might be an important detail.

PS this also does not mention releases from other methane hydrate stores in the ocean...

[kristopher]

8. It is standard practice to convert to CO2e units

Given the paper is in the journal Nature, I'm reasonably confident that is what happened in the body of the work.

As for the oceanic methane hydrates, they didn't address cow flatulence either; probably because neither was a part of the study.

I think this paper has a good message for those who want to encourage us to just give up - THE FIRST TARGET FOR ACTION IS FOSSIL FUELS.

[drm604]

9. Looking at the abstract and editor's summary for the original article on Nature.com,

it appears to be not as clear cut as the Northern Journal's headline makes it sound.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/full/nature14338.html

Large quantities of organic carbon are stored in frozen soils (permafrost) within Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. A warming climate can induce environmental changes that accelerate the microbial breakdown of organic carbon and the release of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. This feedback can accelerate climate change, but the magnitude and timing of greenhouse gas emission from these regions and their impact on climate change remain uncertain. Here we find that current evidence suggests a gradual and prolonged release of greenhouse gas emissions in a warming climate and present a research strategy with which to target poorly understood aspects of permafrost carbon dynamics.

The full article is behind a pay wall so it's hard to say for sure.

[kristopher]

10. That sounds consistent with the press release.

"n Canada, Olefeldt said the Mackenzie Valley in the Northwest Territories and the Hudson Bay Lowlands are where large stores of carbon are most vulnerable to thawing, though the phenomenon is occurring everywhere from Fort McMurray northward. Another key area, he said, is in northern Russia along the coast.

But unlike reports of an imminent and rapid permafrost-fueled “carbon bomb,” as some worst-case scenarios have put it, Olefeldt said the thaw is likely to produce a gradual and prolonged release over time, meaning humans have time to prepare.

That said, new scientific information is constantly altering what science knows and can predict about climate change. Just last week, another article published in the Nature Climate Change journal reported that the breakdown of organic materials in warming permafrost actually generates heat, boosting decomposition in a way similar to composting and causing more melting.

“So we don’t know everything,” Olefeldt said. “Even with the projections we have in our article there are large uncertainties.”

[daleanime]

11. More information is always good, but the take away remains the same....

we need to start now.

[GliderGuider]

12. Actually we needed to start 40 years or more ago.

We'll see how the Arctic methane situation unfolds in the next decade, but we already have more than enough on our plate to put the brakes on this round of world civilization.

Too bad, so sad.

[kristopher]

13. We started in 1992 (if not before)

That was the Rio Earth Summit where the international community formally acknowledged the decades of research telling us that the increasing level of GHGs was a problem that we must take action to address.

It takes a lot of time to change the trajectory of a system with the inertia of our fossil fuel energy dependency. Think about planning and executing any large scale project. There is a huge amount of unseen activity that takes place in planning and establishing a supply chain for the elements needed to accomplish actual construction. We are right now at the stage where "construction" is actively commencing around the world. That is a long, long way past the "start" date. We could wish that all the jockeying, bickering and wasted motions weren't part of the picture, butt for good or ill they always have been and always will be.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. Original Press Release: Thawing that abets climate change will occur over decades and centuries

http://uofa.ualberta.ca/news-and-events/newsarticles/2015/april/thawing-that-abets-climate-change-will-occur-over-decades-and-centuries

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Thawing that abets climate change will occur over decades and centuries[/font]

[font size=4]Researchers predict gradual, prolonged release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost.[/font]

By Helen Metella on April 16, 2015

[font size=3](Edmonton) There’s qualified good news about one contributor to climate change, say researchers who have crunched data from a series of recent studies.

Organic carbon trapped in permafrost soils of arctic and subarctic regions risk being released as greenhouse gases to the atmosphere once these soils thaw and start to decompose. However, evidence suggests that the release will be gradual rather than abrupt, spanning decades to centuries as opposed to a single decade.

“Taking into account the full body of evidence published over the last decade allows us to largely rule out catastrophic scenarios of runaway climate change in response to arctic permafrost thaw,” said David Olefeldt, a researcher in the Department of Renewable Resources and CAIP Chair in Watershed Management and Wetland Restoration. He’s one of a group of researchers from around the world who reviewed current knowledge about permafrost thaw in a new study.

However, even the more moderate rate of greenhouse gas emissions associated with this organic carbon release will still make climate change happen faster than we would expect based on human activities alone.

…[/font][/font]

Study here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/full/nature14338.html