Thawing tundra emits dangerous methane gas

In Northern Sweden at Stordalen Mire scientists and finding the amount of wetlands to have increased more than 50% at the expense of higher dry land which had been underlain by permafrost. The scientists express concern that methane emissions seem to increase with temperature and could be a positive feedback creating even more atmospheric warming.

The peat tundra in Siberia covers about 1 million square miles, and as it thaws tons of methane could be released into the atmosphere. Since global warming predictions have been based on present gas emission statistics, the acceleration methane threw thawing dramatically throw off the rapidity and scale of those predictions. Sergei Kirpotin -a leading scientists who is studying the global warming effects of peat tundra described the thaw as an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming."

How much, and how rapidly, the thawing of the Siberian peat bog affects global warming depends on whether or not it dries out as it thaws. If it dries, then the primary gas will be carbon dioxide. If it does not dry, then tons of methane will be released. Methane is twenty times more potent as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide.

These types of events - thawing tundras, melting ice caps and glaciers, warming ocean waters - are a cascading effect of global warming. They are unpredictable in terms of how much or how fast temperatures will rise. However, they are also unpredictable in terms of slowing or reversing the damage caused. The use of the term "tipping point" reflects this - the point beyond which dramatic change occurs as the cascading effects accelerate.

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