Russian Permafrost Melt - BBC

Russian scientists travel to Siberia to measure output of methane from permafrost lakes. BBC goes along.

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  Science & Technology

[arsjth]

do you think this area might have frozen over again considering most of the northern hemisphere is covered in snow?

if the melting was supportive of global warming is the refreezing contradictory?

[greenman3610]

permafrost is soil frozen to many meters in depth. If it thaws, a layer of snow on top will not refreeze it.

[arsjth]

@green Seasonal permafrost occurs during colder seasons&thaws or disappears during warmer times of the year

Even though permafrost can last for 000's of years, it is often close to its melting point (Williams&Smith, 1989). Its temperature, and therefore its distribution and thickness, is directly related to the ground's thermal regime, which in turn is affected by precipitation, vegetative cover, organic material, hydrology, erosion,& human& natural disturbances, such as forest fires or cities.

[greenman3610]

obvously no one is concerned about "seasonal" permafrost.

they call it "perma" frost for a reason. That's why people have been able to build roads, pipelines, and buildings on it as a solid foundation --- until recently.

[greenman3610]

I guess you didn't understand that frozen permafrost is too cold to be called a swamp.

It's more like dirty ice.

When it melts, it becomes a swamp, and the whole swamp gas thing happens.

I think this is really not as difficult as it seems to be for you.

[greenman3610]

Ah looked out mah winder, an' it wuz snowin!

there cain't be no glowbull warmin'!

watch?v=yDTUuckNHgc

[Lupakalia]

Yeah, that footage is clearly faked, y'know, like the moon landings. And it's Russians, so there bound to be Commies, trying to distroy Americas business.

[rnvventures]

Does anyone have a citation for this? A date of airing? The proper spelling of the reporter's name (Alec Balderov??)? Anything citable?

[Ernest Tang]

When the earth is warmed enough, believed to be somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees, the methane would be released at such a fast rate that even if we stopped releasing GHG all together, that won't do much at all.

More methane released = more heat = even more methane released.

Run away GHG effect.

[Ernest Tang]

Just for those who don't know. Methane is about 25x as potent as Co2.

As we continue to burn fossil fuels, we release lots of co2, this warms the earth somewhat. But it also warms the areas which have permafrost. As more permafrost is thawed, it releases Methane, methane being very potent will keep the earth warmer, thus more Methane released, thus even more warmth and it goes in that spiral.

[Bannor Haruchai]

Perhaps you need to make a video specifically on methane. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is of greater concern than that swamp - it's bigger, fairly shallow and already releasing 7 million tons and increasing. If only 1 percent of it gets released in a short time, then our CO2 emissions won't matter anymore. There's more info at the NSF site , cntn_id=116532

[Jean-Yves Toumit]

no, no. Scuba is perfectly right. He's just not mentionning that the human race, along with so many other species, doesn't survive this process. It did happen before. It will happen again. But this time we're the cause of it and we can do something about it. Whereas the dinosaurs didn't have a nuclear missile to shoot the meteor. Anyway, focusing on the positive, at least the earth might get rid of that cancer that eats it up - the human race. ;)

[Pangolinx1]

Nature: 80 trillion, Humans: 0. The time to stop burning fossil fuels to avoid rapid climate change was probably somewhere around 1950. There was no way that humans with their puny ability to act collectively for that common good were going to do that.

At best humans will be interesting fossils for some other race to pick over in 30 million years.

[PtAltmVansanTarr]

Omg this is so so so bad