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Arctic Soil Releases Dangerous Levels of CO2, Speeding Global Warming
For most of the year, the Arctic is frozen: its hard-packed tundra and ice forming solid ground. In fact, some of that ice never melts in what is known as permafrost, which stays solid all year. Now, global warming has caused scientists to worry as permafrost melts, releasing a vast amount of CO2 into the atmosphere and further perpetuating the problem.
Flooding triggered by melting snow washes vast amounts of carbon-rich soil from the land into the water. These waters contain most of the carbon that is currently being released from melting permafrost. Permafrost itself contains years of collected organic matter and when it collapses, it exposes new layers of soil to sunlight. Once this carbon is exposed, it is then oxidized by bacteria and produces CO2. In fact, scientists estimate that carbon from Read more…
Arctic Sea Ice Melt May Trigger Extreme European Winter
Image: Jenny Downing/Flickr
By Stephen Leahy, the Guardian
The record loss of Arctic sea ice this summer may mean a cold winter for the UK and northern Europe. The region has been prone to bad winters after summers with very low sea ice, such as 2011 and 2007, said Jennifer Francis, a researcher at Rutgers University.
“We can’t make predictions yet … [but] I wouldn’t be surprised to see wild extremes this winter,” Francis told the Guardian.
This year’s ice melt has broken the 2007 record by an an area larger than the state of Texas.
Polar ice experts “thought that it would be many years until we again saw anything like we saw in 2007″, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
The unprecedented expanse of ice-free Arctic Ocean has been absorbing the Read more…
Oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing
A new study by NASA scientist Joey Comiso has found that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the ice cap. The rapid disappearance of older ice makes the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cap more vulnerable to further decline.
Arctic multi-year ice “extent”—which includes all areas where at least 15 percent of the ocean surface is covered by multi-year ice—has been vanishing at a rate of –15.1 percent per decade, Comiso found. Over the same period, the “area” covered by multi-year ice—which discards open water among ice floes and focuses exclusively on regions that are completely covered—has been shrinking by –17.2 percent per decade. The findings were Read more…
Climate change blamed for decline in penguins: Population has halved in 30 years in western Antarctica
Climate change effects on food sources may have contributed to a halving of penguin populations in western Antarctica, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that populations of Adelie and chinstrap penguins in the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) and Scotia Sea had fallen by 50 per cent in the last 30 years.
The decline was directly related to a huge reduction in numbers of the penguins’ main prey, shrimp-like krill.
Krill density had dropped by as much as 80per cent, both because of heightened Read more…
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