Melting permafrost may appear to be be a problem only for "cold country" locations like Alaska, Canada, or Russia where many homes, buildings, and community infrastructure are built on permafrost. As long as permafrost doesn't melt during warm periods everything is fine. If the permafrost melts, the foundations of structures start to collapse. To the "warm country" casual observer, the global warming denier, or the morally bankrupt, melting permafrost might not even bring a shrug.
However, melting permafrost is one of those "wild cards" that might define a runaway climate tipping point. Permafrost is mainly frozen "old" vegetation from a time when the world was much warmer. As permafrost warms it turns to mush as the vegetation decays. The byproduct? Greenhouse gases. Of particular concern is methane gas.
While methane gas has a shorter "shelf life" than carbon dioxide, it traps 25 times the heat over a hundred year period. (Atmospheric methane on wikipedia) So the question is essentially this: If there is widespread melting of the permafrost, how much methane will be released? Leave the actual calculations to the scientists as the actual range of possibilities probably doesn't matter with regard to the big picture. If one considers permafrost's kissing cousin, underwater methane hydrates, the potential release of methane into the atmosphere, simply is substantial, if not catastrophic.
Warmer Temps Threaten Railway
BRANDON SUN - Churchill shipping runs over peatland Global warming may extend the shipping season in Churchill, but it's also melting permafrost and softening the rail bed leading to the port, researchers say.
Railroad tracks warped due to thawing of permafrost, near Gillam, Manitoba (Erik Nielson, Manitoba Geological Survey)That will make it more costly to transport product to Hudson Bay by rail to load onto ships, say researchers.
"You might benefit from melting sea ice but you've got to get the product to and from port," said Rick Bello, climatologist at York University in Toronto.
Research shows climate change is now causing peat moss that has been frozen for up to 6,000 years to melt. "Churchill was always on continuous permafrost. Now people are drilling bore holes and not finding permafrost," said Bello.
It means the Hudson Bay line connecting Churchill to the rest of the province could sink in places. "It will mean higher maintenance costs, for sure. We haven't seen the upper end of what it's going to cost," he said.
Bello, who has studied Churchill for over 30 years, observed the situation first hand recently on a Via Rail train.
Peter Kershaw, adjunct professor in the earth sciences department at the University of Alberta, who was in Churchill recently on a research project, agrees. "It's a big concern and so far not well-quantified," said Kershaw, of greenhouse-gas emissions from thawing peat. "That organic material is being made available for decomposition. It's out of the freezer and sitting on the counter."
One Kershaw study showed permafrost 15 metres deep in the Hudson Bay Lowlands has warmed by half a degree, from -0.9 degrees Celsius in the mid-1970s, to -0.45 degrees today. That half-degree warming penetrating so deeply into the ground is significant, he said.
Nearing a Tipping Point on Melting Permafrost?
CLIMATE CENTRAL - Nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere’s land surface is covered in permanently frozen soil, or permafrost, which is filled with carbon-rich plant debris — enough to double the amount of heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere if the permafrost all melted and the organic matter decomposed.
According to a paper published in Science, that melting could come sooner, and be more widespread, than experts previously believed. If global average temperature were to rise 2.5°F (1.5°C) above where it stood in pre-industrial times say earth scientist Anton Vaks of Oxford University and an international team of collaborators (and it's already more than halfway there), permafrost across much of northern Canada and Siberia could start to weaken and decay. And since climate scientists project at least that much warming by the middle of the 21st century, global warming could begin to accelerate as a result, in what’s known as a feedback mechanism.
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