Thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming in decades to come, says new study

[Peter M]

This is a press release from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

One- to two-thirds of Earth’s permafrost will disappear by 2200, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, says a study by researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

“The amount of carbon released is equivalent to half the amount of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age,” said NSIDC scientist Kevin Schaefer. “That is a lot of carbon.”

http://nsidc.org/news/press/20110216_permafrost.html

[salbers]

Any signal of this here? Maybe over time...

http://www.esrl.noaa.../carbontracker/

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/fluxmaps.php?region=glb&average=longterm#imagetable

[hoosierwx]

Funny how they are a little fuzzy about how much permafrost may melt but give hard numbers to the amount of carbon that will be released. This is the kind of slanted reporting of studies that does not help those wanting to sway people's opinion. If you are saying your cause may be off by half then so must be your effect.

[stellarfun]

abstract here, but not full text

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0889.2011.00527.x/abstract

this is for carbon dioxide, permafrost melting would also release huge amounts of methane. not clear whether the carbon reflects released methane being converted to CO2 over time, or just the result from direct release of CO2.

[salbers]

Funny how they are a little fuzzy about how much permafrost may melt but give hard numbers to the amount of carbon that will be released. This is the kind of slanted reporting of studies that does not help those wanting to sway people's opinion. If you are saying your cause may be off by half then so must be your effect.

It looks like they are mentioning the uncertainty in the released carbon (the "effect")........

'The scientists used a model to predict how much carbon the thawing will release. They estimate an extra 190 plus or minus 64 gigatons of carbon will enter the atmosphere by 2200—about one-fifth the total amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere today. Carbon emissions from thawing permafrost will require greater reductions in fossil fuel emissions, to limit the atmospheric carbon dioxide to some maximum value associated with a target climate, Schaefer said. “It means the problem is getting more and more difficult all the time,” he said. “It is hard enough to reduce the emissions in any case, but now we saying that we have to reduce it even more.” '