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Thawing of permafrost may fuel global warming, exceeding Paris climate targets sooner than expecte

  • Thawing of permafrost may fuel global warming, exceeding Paris climate targets sooner than expecte
    Massive blue ground ice exposure on the north shore of Herschel Island, Yukon, Canada.

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European Commission
The European Commission is the EU's executive arm. It takes decisions on the Union's political and strategic direction.

The emissions from the thawing permafrost may become an important contributor to climate change.

This would mean that meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement might not be enough to limit the global temperature increase at 2 °C.

The Paris Agreement aims to limit the global atmospheric temperature increase at 2 °C at the end of the century by capping greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the rising temperatures in the Arctic may lead to the thawing of permafrost, resulting in additional emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

These additional emissions will diminish the "carbon budget" – the allowable amount of additional man-made emissions – to remain below the agreed level of global warming.

This would require additional efforts for the mitigation of global warming.

In support of the EU policy for the Arctic, a JRC report on the Arctic permafrost thawing evaluates the ongoing and future warming over the Arctic permafrost and the resulting  emissions  of  carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).

The Arctic warms faster than the rest of the planet

"Arctic amplification" refers to the phenomenon where changes in the net radiation balance – for instance due to greenhouse gases – produce a larger temperature increase near the poles than elsewhere on the planet.

Using atmospheric model simulations, JRC scientists concluded that the Arctic amplification of global warming in the last decades is mainly caused by the warming  of the  ocean  and  sea-ice  in  the winter  and  by the warming of the  land  in  the summer.

There were no significant signs of warming of the near/surface temperatures of the land in the winter.

Thawing permafrost produces increasing CO2 emissions

Permafrost is ground that has layers with temperatures that are continuously below the freezing point for two or more consecutive years.

It exists in northern latitudes, alpine regions, and polar coastal areas below ocean surface.

Past changes in the climatic conditions in the permafrost area have resulted in the accumulation of deposited vegetation, which has created large concentrations of organic carbon in the soil.

When permafrost  thaws,  organic  carbon  becomes  exposed  to  the  microbial  activity.

As a  consequence  the ground layer emits CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere.

The CO2 emissions from the thawing permafrost already have an impact on the global warming rate, but at the moment their contribution is much smaller than that of man-made emissions.

Scientists estimate that in the future the emissions from the thawing permafrost may become bigger than anthropogenic emissions, and the Paris agreement targets to reduce the global warming may be exceeded sooner than expected.

This would require additional reductions of anthropogenic emissions for limiting the increase of global temperature.

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