Destabilized | Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News joined an Arctic research expedition in August that included MBL's Jim McClelland and scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Watch Bloomberg's video about the expedition here.
On a blustery day in August, a team of five scientists watched with perverse fascination as saltwater from the Arctic Ocean lapped over the tundra of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. They’d spent more than a year studying the phenomenon that’s increasingly common as land ice melts, but had never witnessed it firsthand.
The thrill of catching the moment belied the planetary stakes of the scene. The Arctic tundra beneath the researchers’ feet — specifically, the frozen layer known as permafrost — is a crucial part of the Earth’s delicate climate balance. Over thousands of years, this permanently frozen band has locked away 1.4 trillion tons of carbon, roughly twice what’s currently in the atmosphere. Frozen, that carbon poses no threat. But after millennia of stability, global warming is raising the risk that the store turns into a source of emissions instead.
A January study found that, taking into account the impact of bigger and more frequent wildfires, the Arctic sink has already turned into a driver of climate change. Now, experts are racing to figure out if rising saltwater will be yet another source of damage to the permafrost. Read rest of the article here.
Source: Destabilized | Bloomberg News