Feb 11, 2013

Sunlight stimulates release of climate-warming gas from melting Arctic permafrost, study says


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University of Michigan ecologist George Kling at a landslide thermokarst on a glacial headwall near Toolik Lake, Alaska. As permafrost ice melts, the soil collapses and either creates an erosional hole in the tundra or a landslide such as this one. These features are called thermokarst failures. Photo courtesy of George Kling. Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought.

Read Full article: http://phys.org/news/2013-02-sunlight-climate-warming-gas-arctic-permafrost.html#jCp

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