Michael Crown from the University of Alberta warns about a new study that has found a new source of greenhouse gases that will compete for the most emissions with the likes of the European Union, Russia, China, the United States, and Canada.
The age of permafrost emissions that has terrified climate scientists for decades has begun and added another significantly sized developed nation source of planet-killing gases to the mix compared to the nations with the largest fossil fuel emitters.
The international study aimed to find land changes in the high arctic from warming by anthropogenic climate change. As noted in previous diaries, the Arctic is warming four to seven times faster than the rest of the planet. If we lose the Arctic, and we likely are, then we lose the earth, paraphrasing Finnish President Sauli Niinisto to world governments at COP 26 in November of 2021.
Arctic Amplification is recorded in the Paleoclimate record and will be factored into future models of Arctic disruption shortly. Already mammals are perishing en masse in parts of the tundra, the oceans, and boreal forests. The changes are so frequent and prominent that nobody can deny their existence, at least any serious people. Greenland ice volume is contributing to sea level rise; the vast expanse of permafrost thaw has begun on land, and in the continental shelf off of Siberia's coast, ice-free oceans have allowed predators such as Orca to expand their range into formerly old, thick sea ice that has protected beluga and narwhals from predation for thousands of years.
Warming temperatures and increasing rainfall have accelerated the thaw of frozen soils. The signs are everywhere, slumps, thermokarst lakes, methane-filled bulges, and pingos. The 2022 Arctic Report Card was released by NOAA, and the news is grim.
Meteorologist for the CBC Christy Climenhaga writes an excellent article:
Warming temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns are factors that can accelerate permafrost thaw.
The amount of emissions from permafrost is directly reliant on how much warmer our atmosphere gets – the higher the degree of warming, the more emissions we can expect.
"It's like adding another country," says David Olefeldt, an associate professor at the University of Alberta and co-author of the study.
Based on the study, future emissions by the end of the century range from 55 billion tonnes of carbon in CO2 equivalents under lower emission scenarios, to 232 billion tonnes of carbon under higher emissions, released as carbon dioxide and methane.
To put that in perspective, if Russia, the United States and China were to continue to emit as they did in 2019, they would release 46, 144, and 277 billion tonnes by the end of the century, respectively.
Olefeldt says that in a moderate warming scenario, the greenhouse gas emissions from the permafrost region this century will be equivalent to annual emissions somewhere between that of Russia and the United States.
David Olefeldt of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta writes:
“It's not something that's going to cause runaway climate change, but it definitely adds an accelerant to climate change and is an important component of the future greenhouse gas budget for the world,” he explains.
“The more we are able to restrain human emissions and thereby avoid the worst-case scenarios of warming, the more carbon is going to stay in the ground in the Arctic.”
The authors emphasize that ongoing international efforts to reduce emissions must account for this “country of permafrost” in climate targets and actions.
The study also outlines uncertainties in estimating future greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost. Abrupt thaw, when permafrost thaw causes land surface collapse, can lead to large greenhouse gas emissions, but only one-fifth of current permafrost terrain is believed to be vulnerable to abrupt thaw. It’s also uncertain whether thaw will lead to wetter or drier soils, which matters because wetter soils promote emissions of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas.
The team estimates that under a low warming scenario — one that could be achieved if the global community limited warming to 2 C — permafrost would release 55 billion tonnes of carbon by the end of the century in the form of carbon dioxide and methane. If nothing is done to mitigate climate warming, the study estimates the Arctic could release nearly five times that amount, which is twice the amount of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions the United States has released since its industrial rise to power began 150 years ago.
All told, the study describes nine future scenarios based on how climate warming progresses and what actions global leaders take to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
CBC Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga is a meteorologist and CBC Edmonton's climate reporter. Her discussion on the report is embedded in the below tweet.