Retreating permafrost coasts threaten the fragile Arctic environment

Retreating permafrost coasts threaten the fragile Arctic environment

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Global Warming Focus -- Permafrost makes up a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere. Climate change means that Arctic coasts are thawing and eroding at an ever greater pace, releasing additional greenhouse gases. A large EU project, coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), is now exploring the consequences for the global climate and for the people living in the Arctic. But that’s not all: working together with residents of the Arctic region, the researchers will also co-design strategies for the future in order to cope with ongoing climate change.

The sheer size of permafrost regions make them a global issue. A quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere consists of permafrost soils, which have been frozen solid for thousands of years. A third of the world’s coastlines are permafrost and span Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Siberia. Researchers have known for years that the permafrost is thawing ever more rapidly due to climate change. Yet we still don’t know exactly what consequences this will have for the global climate, or for the people living there. In the EU project Nunataryuk experts from 27 research institutions will spend the next five years intensively answering this research question and …

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(2017-12-04), Retreating permafrost coasts threaten the fragile Arctic environment, Global Warming Focus, 170, ISSN: 1945-7855, BUTTER® ID: 014800782