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Permafrost in some areas of the Canadian Arctic is thawing so fast that it's gulping up the equipment left there to study it.
"The ground thaws and swallows it," said Merritt Turetsky, a University of Guelph biologist whose new research warns the rapid thaw could dramatically increase the amounts of greenhouse gases released from ancient plants and animals frozen within the tundra.
"We've put cameras in the ground, we've put temperature equipment in the ground, and it gets flooded. It often happens so fast we can't get out there and rescue it.
"We've lost dozens of field sites. We were collecting data on a forest and all of a sudden it's a lake."
Turetsky's research, published this week in the journal Nature, looks at the rate of permafrost thaw across the Arctic and what its impact could be on attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @03:32AM (1 child)
Oh It does, just depends on your definition of forest. Alaska has a lot of "forest" made up of trees that are maybe 30 feet at their highest but mostly spindly diseased looking 20ft twigs. Inland has some bigger trees, But it also gets to 80+ in the summer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 05 2019, @04:41AM
I suppose there is a map somewhere on the internet, showing how the tree line starts out very high at the equator. As you go north or south, the tree line comes down toward sea level. At some point, the tree line reaches sea level, and there are no more trees, at all. With global warming, that sea level tree line will move north and south, allowing seeds to germinate, and seedlings to push roots into unfrozen soil. Closer to the equator, the elevation of the tree line will go up as well. The elevation probably won't move up as fast as it will move north and south, but it will surely go up. The increase in carbon dioxide will probably help the tree line to move upward, but there has to be a limit to that.
Unless we geoengineer a tree that will germinate on ice, there will never be a forest sprouting on permafrost.
Adak Island, in the Aleutian Islands has a little bitty "National Forest" that was planted around WW2 time. Can't remember for sure, I guess there were like 30 trees in it. When I stood in the middle of that forest in 1976, there were like two or three trees taller than I was. My view of the landscape around me was not obstructed, that's for certain. Temperatures on Adak varied little from summer to winter - and that wasn't even permafrost.
More recent photos here suggest that tallest tree might be 9 feet high now - https://maps.roadtrippers.com/stories/the-sad-tale-of-americas-smallest-national-forest [roadtrippers.com] Of course, the angle of the camera shot may contribute to that appearance.
Climate on Adak here: https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/adak/alaska/united-states/usak0001 [usclimatedata.com] There aren't a lot of arctic blasts bringing the temperature down to -40 and lower.