Tim Radford, writing for Climate News Network, reports that scientists are mulling Arctic’s slow CO2 loss.
The Arctic permafrost thaws each year, but – to the surprise of scientists from Denmark – in some areas it is not releasing the carbon dioxide it contains nearly as fast as they had expected.
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This video from Yale Climate Forum explains that we are half way to the threshold temperature at which arctic permafrost will thaw and release huge quantities of carbon dioxide and methane into the earth’s atmosphere, triggering uncontrollable climate change.
Recent research from Oxford University indicates arctic permafrost thawing will occur if the earth’s temperature increases to 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial temperature of the earth.
We are now 0.8ºC hotter than in pre-industrial times, so it’s vital that we reduce human-caused carbon emissions quickly and steeply, in order to have a chance of stopping the rise in the earth’s temperature before it reaches 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial level.