Climate Change on Ice in Alaska
Alaskans may be more familiar with the up-close devastation caused by our warming globe than anyone in the Western Hemisphere.
Entire coastal villages have been forced to relocate inland, polar bears have drowned in Alaskan waters, and the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service has formally decided to silence its employees regarding such events.
That recently came to light thanks to a memorandum leaked by Deborah Williams, with a reputable career in government and the Department of the Interior, non-profits and wildlife leading to her current position as President of Alaska Conservation Solutions.
The censorship is especially inopportune just weeks after proud announcements of the International Polar Year, which is set to study in-depth the impact of global warming in the North and South poles (reg. req’d). Scientists from 60 countries, supposedly supported by our own presidential science adviser John H. Marburger III, are driven by the burden of questions that outnumber answers.
Here’s one more question: How can our scientists adequately contribute or even participate if government employees in Alaska are on orders to restrict discussion on climate change, sea ice, and polar bears? I must have missed that memo.
March 12th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
While the thawing in Alaska and Siberia is of great concern for its inhabitants (human and otherwise), it affects the rest of us just as much. In the 16 June 2006 issue of Science, Zimov et. al had a little item “Permafrost and the Global Carbon Budget”. Here is a quote from that:
“Using an overall average carbon concentration for yedoma of ~2.6%, as well as the typical bulk density, average thickness, and icewedge content of the yedoma, we estimate the carbon reservoir in frozen yedoma to be ~500 Gt (2). Another ~400 Gt of carbon are contained in nonyedoma permafrost (excluding peatlands) (3), and 50 to 70 Gt reside in the peatbogs of western Siberia (4). These preliminary estimates indicate that permafrost is a large carbon reservoir, intermediate in size between those of vegetation and soils. Our laboratory incubations and field experiments show that the organic matter in yedoma decomposes quickly when thawed, resulting in respiration rates of initially 10 to 40 g of carbon per m^3 per day, and then 0.5 to 5 g of carbon per m^3 per day over several years. These rates are similar to those of productive northern grassland soils. If these rates are sustained in the long term, as field observations suggest, then most carbon in recently thawed yedoma will be released within a century–a striking contrast to the preservation of carbon for tens of thousands of years when frozen in permafrost.”
So most of 500 Gt of carbon released within a century is probably somewhere from 2-4 Gt of carbon per year. To put it in perspective, the U.S. releases just 2 Gt of carbon per year (7 Gt of CO2e GHG). So imagine a world where the U.S. and China and Europe suddendly cut back to 0 carbon emissions. By the time we do that the thawing permafrost will have stepped in and could be emitting as much as the three of us combined. Let’s hope the carbon emissions are “only” CO2. If they are CH4 (23 times higher global warming potential), then we’re really in trouble. In that regard, check out K. M. Walter et al., Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming, Nature Volume 443 Number 7107, page 71.
This stuff is not in the current global climate models yet. I.e. the latest IPCC report doesn’t include this science. Scary stuff.