All across the Arctic, frozen soil is thawing out. A lot of stuff is buried there – plants and animals that lived more than 10,000 years ago. This episode from Threshold asks what happens when a Paleolithic bison bone starts to decompose for the first time? And what does that have to do with climate change?
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Gesche Blume-Werry studies the interaction of plants and permafrost.
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Joachim Jansen is a PhD student at Stockholm University who studies methane releases from Arctic lakes and wetlands.
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Joachim Jansen, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University, checks a methane trap.
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Mathilda Nyzell and Jenny Gåling, master’s students at Stockholm University, trade off rowing while they collect data from methane traps.
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Mathilda Nyzell and Jenny Gåling, master’s students at Stockholm University.
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Scientists often make their own instruments in the field, like these methane traps, which are made with pool noodles.
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The sun sets over the water near Abisko, Sweden.
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There is twice as much carbon locked in Arctic permafrost than what is currently floating around in the atmosphere.
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Joachim Jansen, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University, collects data on methane releases from the lake.
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Arctic Lakes and Methane
This short video from NASA explores how Arctic lakes could soon be a major source of atmospheric methane.
PERMAFROST
New data from two Arctic sites suggest some surface layers are no longer freezing. Find out what that means for people experiencing it first-hand and how it could accelerate climate change in this article from National Geographic.
