Climate Letter #2120

A Washington Post published two years ago contains information that has continuing relevance and should be kept under review by anyone interested in the threat posed by melting of Arctic permafrost.  The article was written in response to NOAA’s 2019 Arctic Report Card, but has much more to offer.  I’ll start with a link to the article, which contains the story headline:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/12/10/arctic-may-have-crossed-key-threshold-emitting-billions-tons-carbon-into-air-long-dreaded-climate-feedback/. Right at the beginning there is an interesting short video explaining how the “yedoma” type of permafrost is created and the extraordinary way it causes havoc when it melts, which can happen in a surprisingly abrupt manner. The video continues with a review of NOAA’s findings.

Aside from the NOAA report, the main feature of the article is a review of a major new scientific study that had just been published in the journal Nature Climate Change, containing surprising new information pertaining to the impact of permafrost warming in winter.  The study had 74 contributing authors and has received at least 129 citations in just two years—all unusual numbers.  It has open access at a special link: https://www.pacificclimate.org/sites/default/files/publications/Science_Brief_36-May_2020.pdf.   The best way to appreciate the seriousness of the conclusions is by reading the expert commentaries that are reported in the Washington Post article.  One example, “We know little about abrupt permafrost thaw, and it occurs at local scales, so [it] is difficult to scale up. But our best estimate shows that abrupt thaw has the potential to double the climate impacts of traditional measurements of permafrost thaw.”

One of the authors, Ted Schuur, is a well-known scientist who has a long history of authoring permafrost studies and is familiar with the arguments on both sides of an outlook that contains many uncertainties. His opinion should carry a little extra weight. He apparently believes that CO2 emissions from permafrost thawing, net of uptake from additional plant life, is already adding to net emissions from human activity, and is likely to expand its effectiveness. This aggravation presents a challenge to fulfillment of any carbon budget for meeting climate goals. “We’ve crossed the zero line,” Schuur said “We don’t think the Arctic is going to emit so much more emissions that it will make fossil fuel emissions irrelevant,” but any extra emissions complicate the already difficult task of slashing them to net zero by mid-century to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, he said.

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In that regard, my letter of January 27, CL#2118, has extra relevance. It reviewed a recent study that raises doubts about the ability of plant life to continue taking up as much of the extra CO2 burden as it has in the past, which is about 30%, in reaction to projected near-term temperature increases. If this holds true there will be that much less abatement available for responding to future emissions due to permafrost thawing.

Carl

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