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.
Learn More
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.