Scientists Estimate Melting Permafrost Will Add Another $43 Trillion To Warming's $326 Trillion Bill

As climate change melts permafrost in the Arctic, huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released into the atmosphere, speeding global warming in the process. A new University of Cambridge study shows that by the end of the 22nd century, the global economic toll of those greenhouse gases will total $43 trillion.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that permafrost soils contain roughly 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon locked in frozen organic matter, which has begun to thaw as the globe warms. Until now, there have been no estimates of the economic costs of releasing that carbon into the atmosphere.

The study assumes that by 2100, humans will have stopped emitting greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will have reached 700 parts per million (it reached 400 ppm globally for the first time in May).

A widely-used model estimating the social cost of carbon emissions placed the global economic price tag of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions at $326 trillion by the year 2200. This week's study shows that emissions from melting permafrost add $43 trillion to that total, ringing up the total cost of climate change at $369 trillion by the end of the next century.

EDIT

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/melting-permafrost-could-cost-43-trillion-19476