The Cooling Effect In Warming Arctic Lakes
Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - 14:31
in Earth & Climate
Warming temperatures are causing Arctic lakes to release methane, a greenhouse gas that has 23X the short term warming effect of CO2, it has been said. A new paper in Nature found that Siberian lakes have actually pulled more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than they have released into it since the last Ice Age That is causing an overall slight cooling effect. Permafrost, especially that in the Siberian Arctic, contains significant amounts of all organic carbon found on Earth locked away in frozen soils. Warming global temperatures in the 15,000 years since the last Ice Age have begun to thaw the permafrost, leading to the widespread formation of lakes. read more