Melting of the Arctic 'will accelerate climate change within 20 years'
An irreversible climate "tipping point" could occur within the next 20 years as a result of the release of huge quantities of organic carbon locked away as frozen plant matter in the vast permafrost region of the Arctic, scientists have found.
Billions of tons of frozen leaves and roots that have lain undisturbed for thousands of years in the permanently frozen ground of the northern hemisphere are thawing out, with potentially catastrophic implications for climate change, the researchers said.
A study into the speed at which the permafrost is melting suggests that the tipping point will occur between 2020 and 2030 and will mark the point at which the Arctic turns from being a net "sink" for carbon dioxide into an overall source that will accelerate global warming, they said.
The study is the first global investigation of what will happen in a warmer world to the huge amounts of frozen plant matter that has remained undegraded in the soil since it was incorporated into the permafrost about 30,000 years ago.
It also found that by 2200 about two-thirds of the Earth's permafrost will have melted, releasing an estimated 190 billion tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the air – about half of all the fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases since the start of the industrial revolution.
"Our research shows that the release of carbon from permafrost will result in an irreversible climate tipping point in only 20 years... Once the frozen carbon thaws out and decays, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost," Dr Schaefer said.
The Arctic has experienced some of the greatest climatic changes in the world over recent decades. Summer sea ice has melted back to record minimums, average temperatures have increased dramatically, and scientists have documented significant melting of the underground permafrost, from Alaska to eastern Siberia.
"All our emission reduction strategies are designed to hit a target atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration corresponding to a target climate. If we do not account for carbon released from thawing permafrost, we will overshoot this target concentration and end up with a warmer climate than we want," Dr Schaefer said.
Link -
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/melting-of-the-arctic-wi...======================
20 years hey, what will our Pollies do?
Nothing, it's outside their election cycle!
You do realise that the Antartic has increased in size, and that the Antartic is 2-3 times the size of the Arctic.
And also that previously the global warmists solar models being used led to an increase in the ocean's evaporation and then claimed that global warming was causing the Arctic to increase in size!
But then the global warmists found that the Arctic was actuallly doing exactly the opposite of what the globalwarmists were predicting and claiming, and that the Arctic was decreasing in size.
So then the global warmists changed their model and then started the claim that global warming was causing the Arctic to shrink.
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