“Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures — as much as 2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in just the past 30 years,” the mission’s principal investigator, Charles Miller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an interview.
“As heat from Earth’s surface penetrates into permafrost, it threatens to mobilize these organic carbon reservoirs and release them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, upsetting the Arctic’s carbon balance and greatly exacerbating global warming,” he added.
Melting permafrost potentially poses a much greater danger because it could release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is much more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, with more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2 over a 100-year period.
Well, I doubt the “20 times” claim. But, that’s for debate.
At any rate, the article continues …. ‘melting permafrost ….. blather…
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The Delinquent Teenager
Climate Ponderings 