Earth Equity News

Bubbles of Warming, Beneath the Ice. By Margot Roosevelt, LATimes, February 20, 2009. "As permafrost thaws in the Arctic, huge pockets of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- could be released into the atmosphere. Experts are only beginning to understand how disastrous that could be... Methane (CH₄) has at least 20 times the heat-trapping effect of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂). As warmer air thaws Arctic soils, as much as 55 billion metric tons of methane could be released from beneath Siberian lakes alone, according to Katey Walter's research...That would amount to 10 times the amount currently in the atmosphere... 'Every time I see bubbles, I have the same feeling,' says Katey Walter, a University of Alaska researcher... working in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska -- Four miles south of the Arctic Circle... 'They are amazing and beautiful'... She enjoys igniting methane seeps with a cigarette lighter, leaping away as the gas flares as high as 20 feet... Beautiful, yes. But ominous... Today, 20% of Earth's land surface is locked up in a deep freeze. But scientists predict that air temperature in the Arctic is likely to rise as much as 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. That is expected to boost the emission of carbon compounds from soils. The upper 3 meters (about 10 feet) of permafrost store 1.7 trillion metric tons of carbon, more than double the amount in the atmosphere today, according to a recent study in the journal Bioscience. 'We are seeing thawing down to 5 meters,' says geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska. 'A third to a half of permafrostis already within a degree to a degree and a half [Celsius] of thawing.' If only 1% of permafrost carbon were to be released each year, that could double the globe's current annual carbon emissions, Romanovsky notes. 'We are at a tipping point for positive feedback,' he warns... Out on the wild frontier of climate research, far from the legislatures and the diplomatic gatherings where climate policy is debated, Katey Walter and her colleagues focus on what they call 'ground truthing.' And beyond that laborious data-gathering, Walter has a mission: to spread the word about what is happening."