My MS in Geology specialized in permafrost dynamics, so I am particularly interested in a new paper on the total carbon stored in Northern Hemisphere permafrost. Unfortunately, the news is bad, because it shows that the IPCC has underestimated the carbon pool by an order of magnitude. Why is this bad? Beacuse the Arctic is melting rapidly, and therefore this carbon will be released to the atmosphere in a positive warming feedback. According to the authors of the paper, this could result in an additional 80 ppm CO2 emissions by 2100, which would lead to further melting and further CO2 release. This threatens to overwhelm any potential human reductions in CO2, and the total potential CO2 release is many times the historical total of human CO2 emissions.
The key message in all of this that we must reduce human CO2 emissions much faster than currently planned, or else natural amplifying feedback mechanisms threaten to create a catastrophic runaway global warming.
The key question is how can we use this fact to motivate faster change in human behavior to reduce emissions?
The full paper is available here. Reuters also covers this story here.
