As the Arctic warms,what is happening to the carbon in the permafrost?

Question

As I understand it, nearly half of the world's total soil carbon is stored in less than 12% of its land area,the Arctic permafrost.
What is happening as the permafrost recedes?
Will it enter the atmosphere as CO2 or Methane?
How much will this change the greenhouse gases concentration?

Answer 1

As I understand it, nearly half of the world's total soil carbon is stored in less than 12% of its land area,the Arctic permafrost.

hard to estimate, but yes, there is a huge amount of carbon in peat soils, as far as i know there is as least as much carbon as we have burned already. most of it is still under permafrost, but some not; we have a good deal of it in north u.k. this is stable and still acting as a good sink if left undisturbed, it is when it is drained, flooded, dug out or eroded that the problems start and the peat becomes an emitter.



What is happening as the permafrost recedes?

sinky bits, dry bits, bare bits, eroded bits,



Will it enter the atmosphere as CO2 or Methane?

both;

it will decompose areobically in dry parts, producing CO2.



dried tunda and peat soil burn in increased fires also releasing co2 and soot.



trapped methane from previous decomposition (like during the holocene maximum) is released.



wet areas will decompose anaerobically producing methane.



wet peat that is also draining will lose carbon in yet another way; as dissolved organic carbon into waterways.



How much will this change the greenhouse gases concentration?

could all be sucked up by microorganisms (which happens in the top layer of peat in a healthy bog) or massive release of methane might double it in a few years. your guess is as good as mine.

maybe there are things we can do to help the arctic transition faster into northern temperate ecosystems that will go back to being sinks in a few decades; drainage, grazing by large herbivores, perhaps large scale reseeding of heather, shrubs and sphagnum moss by aeroplane (has been done in the scottish highlands)



edit; FGR, it rots fast once it starts due to the 'enzymatic latch mechanism'

http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C1GPEA_enGB313GB313&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=phenol+oxidase#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1C1GPEA_enGB313GB313&q=phenol+oxidase+enzyme+latch&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=1cccc688c869882c

Answer 2

Obviously the vast vast majority of carbon trapped in the permafrost will remain trapped even it if warms significantly. The person who said Carbon and CO2 aren't the same is correct in spite of the alarmist continual denial of science and the number of thumbs down he got. Go to a bog in England or Florida. What happens? The plant material deposits on it self and forms thick mats of plant matter and soil. This piles up in thick layers. Trevor seems to think that a little exposure the atmosphere will explode these deposits into the atmosphere. Like so much garbage that alarmists spew, this is a ridiculous exaggeration. Natural emission of methane from outgassing occurs all the time. The permafrost form a barrier to upward migration and tends to store much of the gas. When it melts, which it does everytime it gets warm, it tends to release more methane and CO2. In addition, more methanogenic bacteria consume some of the plant material and slowly turn it to methane. That methane QUICKLY turns into CO2 within a very few years. Trevor's point about it being 23 times as bad as CO2 fails to point out how temporary the methane is. I have to ask myself why do alarmists always cherry pick their facts to attempt to scare people and themselves.



Trevor said: <<< In Siberia alone some one million square kilometres has melted. This is not the Sporadic, Isolated or Discontinuous Permafrost – the type that can melt seasonally, but the Continuous Permafrost – the type that shouldn’t be melting. In fact, it hasn’t melted for at least 130,000 years and possible much longer.>>>



Why would anyone take his word for something like that. First how would they know it didn't melt 6000 years ago in the Holocene maximum. Second, 130 thousand years ago was the last interglacial. If it melts in an interglacial, then its melting in the present interglacial can be considered normal. Even assuming the permafrost last melted 130 thousand years, it didn't cause runaway warming then and there is no reason to think it will now unless you are an alarmists and irrational IMO. Third, who is he to determine what should and shouldn't melt. Alarmists always seem to fret over things that melt. Melting is generally a harbinger of spring and warmth where animals and plants can then survive. Frozen ground is good for very little.



Alarmists can't seem to focus their worry on actual problems IMO and focus instead on propping up ghosts.

Answer 3

richie is shameless. "The Nobel Laureates at Royal Society make no claims about permafrost and instead claim that warming by the year 2100 could be a few tenths of a degree Celsius from pre-industrial times so the warming could reverse and they'd still be correct"



He knows perfectly well that the Royal Society, for which he has suddenly acquired such respect, explicitly states that the uncertainties over the extent of global warming are no excuse for present inaction.



We already have release of methane, implications discussed in other answers, and the prospect of accelerated release of carbon dioxide, but this is difficult to quantify.



For that reason, it does not enter into the usual calculations, and is an effect, and a positive feedback, in addition.

Answer 4

Again the permafrost saga is nothing but hyped up alarunist garbage to back up their claim of tipping points. The Nobel Laureates at Royal Society make no claims about permafrost and instead claim that warming by the year 2100 could be a few tenths of a degree Celsius from pre-industrial times so the warming could reverse and they'd still be correct. So how you can claim anything is happening to the carbon in permafrost is crystal ball science a bit like most of Climate Science!

Answer 5

It rots.



It is in stuff like bogs and peat. It decays. It will produce a lot of CO2 and methane. Although as Trevor points out, it will be skewed towards methane.



The rotting will take hundreds if not thousands of years. But the problem is that once it starts, you can't turn off the tap.



Also, the methane has a shorter lifetime than CO2 in the atmosphere. It eventually breaks down into CO2 and water. So we we would expect a climb in methane and then a leveling off over the long term decay of the permafrost, but the CO2 would just keep going up.



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And why does everyone give Peter J thumbs down? He is funny.

Answer 6

One: The arctic isn't warming.



Two: The carbon that you speak of was deposited there when the arctic was green and thriving proving that it has natural cycles of warmth anyway.

Answer 7

Carbon and CO2 are not the same.

Answer 8

Comments like Peters really do show the amateur hour theatrics of the denier movement. What has been happening in regions like Siberia is yet another thing denier try to, well, deny!

But wide ranging research has shown that these regions are indeed melting

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane

and starting to out gas both CO2 and Methane

And this is being seen all across the Arctic from Canada to Alaska to Siberia and Greenland

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100620/permafrost-arctic-100620/

For all deniers talk of how warm Greenland may have been during the MWP we know for certain how warm it is today and that is warm enough in the last decade to grow vegetables.

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/08/13/greenland%E2%80%99s-farmers-plant-hope-in-climate-change/

As deniers continue to cling to stories generated by U.S. denier blogs (like watts) out in the real world regional news shows what is really happening and is clearly showing warming and this is backed by the recent NOAA stats for the year to the end of Nov which show 2010 as the warmest year on record.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/

Answer 9

Thousands and millions of years ago the parts of the world that are now covered in permafrost supported various forms of plant life. Typically these were plants that thrive in damp conditions and include mosses, sphagnum, reeds, marsh grasses and in some cases, forests.



When they were alive, the trees and plants photosynthesised and in so doing they sequestered carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that they converted into cellulose. This cellulose typically made up two thirds of the mass of the plants.



Over time the trees and plants, together with any animals in the region, decomposed and much of it formed peat; left for a few million years longer it would become coal. The peat contains large amounts of carbon from the plants and trees; globally there’s about half a trillion tons of carbon trapped in peatlands.



One of the final stages of decay of plant matter in an anaerobic environment is a methanogenic one in which microbial decomposition produces methane gas. So, not only is there a very significant amount of carbon in the peat but there’s also some 70 billion tons of methane.



Given that methane is 23 times as effective at contributing to global warming as carbon dioxide is, this equates to the same as 1.6 trillion tons of CO2 – known as CO2e or Carbon Dioxide Equivalence (specifically CH4 has a 100 yr GWP of 23).



The carbon trapped in the peat isn’t so much of a problem, it would need to react with oxygen through a process such as combustion in order for it to react and form carbon dioxide. The methane on the other hand, needs no such reaction as it already exists as methane gas; and this is a concern.



Within the Arctic region there is very significant melting of the permafrost. In Siberia alone some one million square kilometres has melted. This is not the Sporadic, Isolated or Discontinuous Permafrost – the type that can melt seasonally, but the Continuous Permafrost – the type that shouldn’t be melting. In fact, it hasn’t melted for at least 130,000 years and possible much longer.



Globally there’s about 60 million square kilometres of permafrost and this means that, as an overall average, there’s about 1,200 tons of methane (27,000 tons CO2e) beneath each square kilometre of permafrost. The melting of a million square km is therefore pretty much the same as a whole years worth of human carbon dioxide emissions (27Gt : 31Gt).



As with all future predictions, there is considerable variation when calculating how much more permafrost will melt. Some calculations suggest as little as 2 or 3 million square km will melt by the year 2050, other researchers have provided figures of 10 to 20 million km² by 2100; the mean would appear to be around the 6 to 8 million km² mark by 2100.



As the permafrost melts it gives rise to an unusual phenomenon called Drunken Forests, in which trees lean drunkenly at unusual angles due to the fact that the once frozen ground has now thawed and become deconsolidated.

Picture - http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x70/AnthonyMarr/PermafrostDrunkenForest02-1.jpg



The thawing also presents problems for buildings that have been constructed on permafrost. When they were constructed no-one thought that the ice would melt and so they were built directly onto what was considered a solid foundation. As the permafrost melts these buildings are now sinking.

Picture - http://forces.si.edu/soils/images/media/library_031_lg.jpg



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EDIT: TO JIM



Stop waffling and read some science. Your answer serves to do little other than to demonstrate your very poor comprehension of climatic matters. You’ve made error after error and clearly don’t even understand what I’ve written.



Just one example “Trevor's point about it being 23 times as bad as CO2 fails to point out how temporary the methane is”. No it doesn’t, I specifically stated that “CH4 has a 100 yr GWP of 23” – if you don’t understand something don’t make assumptions, look it up.



If I wanted to be alarmist I would have stated that methane is 33 times as effective as carbon dioxide (this is the figure from recent research) http://www.methanenet.org/content/methane-has-larger-gwp or that during it’s atmospheric residence period (ARP) methane is more than 100 times as effective as CO2.



The figure of 23 that I used is the AVERAGE over a 100 year period – the standard way of expressing GWPs. Methane has an ARP of approx 12 years and therefore the GWP during that time is much higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

Answer 10

Another alarmist prediction will fail.



My guess is freezing temperatures in Havana cause Castro to finally die.