Interlinked Climate & Energy Challenges

2003: Mean annual ground temperatures in Yakust, Siberia (Latitude 62.1N, Longitude 129.8E), from 1833-2003. Results are preliminary [From V. Romanovsky] (ACI, NOAA). “There is evidence that greater warming could release substantial amounts of methane in the Arctic. Much of the ten-degree Fahrenheit global warming that caused mass extinctions, such as the one at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, appears to have been caused by release of “frozen methane.” Those releases of methane may have taken place over centuries or millennia, but release of even a significant fraction of the methane during this century could accelerate global warming, preventing achievement of the alternative scenario and possibly causing ice sheet disintegration and further long-term methane release that are out of our control,” wrote Jim Hansen, NASA Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in the New York Review of Books (Hansen, 2006).

Reference: Arctic Change Indicator, NOAA. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/land-permafrost.shtml; Hansen, J. The Threat to the Planet. New York Review of Books. 2006. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19131

Connection to the 2007 IPCC Report on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, “In the Polar Regions, the main projected biophysical effects are reductions in thickness and extent of glaciers and ice sheets, and changes in natural ecosystems with detrimental effects on many organisms including migratory birds, mammals and higher predators. In the Arctic, additional impacts include reductions in the extent of sea ice and permafrost, increased coastal erosion, and an increase in the depth of permafrost seasonal thawing” (IPCC, 2007). Climate Change 2007: Summary For Policymakers. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Report. Corresponding chapter title: 15.3, 15.4, 15.2. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm#1

Image Description: see case description. Image Location: Arctic Change Indicator, NOAA. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/land-permafrost.shtml Image Permission: This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.