Permafrost Covers 16% Of Earth's Surface, Holds Half The Carbon, And It's Releasing More C, CH4

Scientists who studied the Alaskan tundra have warned that global warming could make microbes which live in the soil release more greenhouse gases. The permafrost soils on the northern latitude make up around 16 percent of the Earth's surface, but harbor about half of our planet's total carbon beneath its surface. As such, disruptions to this area have the potential to worsen climate change, the authors of the study published in the journal PNAS explained.

To find out what might happen to the microbes if the frigid soil is heated up by rising global temperatures, the team visited a "moist, acidic tundra area" at a site in interior Alaska, near Denali National Park in the Eight Mile Lake region. Past research has shown the northern latitude has experienced rates of warming above the global average, and the permafrost in the area chosen by the team has thawed in the past few decades.

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Eric R. Johnston, a postdoctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who worked on the study while completing his PhD at Georgia Tech, commented in a statement: "At the upper boundary of the initial permafrost boundary layer—45 to 55 centimeters below the surface—the relative abundance of genes involved in methane production (methanogenesis) increased with warming, while genes involved in organic carbon respiration—the release of carbon dioxide—became more abundant at shallower depths." More widely, existing research has similarly shown methane and carbon dioxide are being released at a greater rate throughout the region in recent years "as a result of climate warming," said Johnston.

Kostas T. Konstantinidis, co-author of the study and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, commented in a statement: "We saw that microbial communities respond quite rapidly—within four or five years—to even modest levels of warming." Konstantinidis explained: "Because of the very large amount of carbon in these systems, as well as the rapid and clear response to warming found in this experiment and other studies, it is becoming increasingly clear that soil microbes—particularly those in the northern latitudes—and their activities need to be represented in climate models," he said. "Our work provides markers—species and genes—that can be used in this direction."

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https://www.newsweek.com/global-warming-microbes-alaskan-tundra-greenhouse-gases-scientists-1448065