Climate: why the thawing of permafrost could have harmful consequences

André Loesekrug-Pietri, edited by Gauthier Delomez 10:35 a.m., March 22, 2022

EDITORIAL

Despite the war in Ukraine, we must not look away from the climate crisis, which is largely playing out in Russia.

This is the appeal of John Kerry, special envoy of the American presidency in charge of the fight against global warming, in the columns of

on Tuesday.

The thawing of permafrost is a real time bomb for the whole planet, warns the editorialist André Loesekrug-Pietri on Europe 1. He reports the many consequences that the melting of this frozen ground could cause.

André Loesekrug-Pietri first tries to reconcile the Ukrainian crisis and the climate crisis.

"We talked a lot at the beginning of the Russian offensive of frozen soils and the embargo of vehicles in Ukraine. And today, we should talk about permafrost. In French, we call it permafrost. This is the part permanently frozen ground for at least two years, making this ground impermeable.This permafrost exists in the most northern lands, as well as in high altitudes such as the Alps, and it covers 90% of Greenland, 80% of the "Alaska, 50% of Canada and Russia, including the Siberian part. In Siberia, that's pretty much anything above 60 degrees latitude."

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Permafrost, a marker of climate change

You have to worry about permafrost "because the formation of permafrost is very closely linked to climate change. That's why it is monitored as a marker of this warming by a worldwide network of researchers who rely on surveys , temperature measurements and most importantly, growing on satellite tracking.And the rapid thaw could dramatically increase the amounts of greenhouse gases that are emitted by plants and ancient animals that have been trapped in the Currently, the permafrost is about 23 million km², so it's a quarter of the land mass of the northern hemisphere. It's huge."

23 million km², this represents "about 50 times the size of France. In addition, the last maximum, which dates from 20,000 years ago, when the entire northern half of France was frozen, the sea level was 120 meters lower. Therefore, the melting of the permafrost is likely to also create significant ground movements, which is worrying, because many constructions or entire cities like Yakutsk in Russia are placed on 300 meters of ground and frozen rocks.

The risk of an increase of several degrees

The melting of this permafrost is a gigantic consequence for the planet.

"The Arctic permafrost contains 1.500 billion tons of greenhouse gases. That's about twice of all the CO2 that has in the atmosphere. is about 36 billion tons. It's a real ticking time bomb. To this day, it's an almost invisible danger because emissions haven't really increased for 20 years. It's 600 million tons is less than 2% of the total.But according to a British study, 40% of this permafrost could melt before the end of this century.

There is a scientific consensus to say that mercury, methane and CO2 emissions will increase.

The problem is that we understand this arctic ecosystem poorly enough to know when things are going to get carried away.

Because the real subject is that there is a risk of a chain reaction effect.

Permafrost thaw allows organic waste to become accessible.

Microbes produce CO2, methane.

This will also increase global warming and we are therefore in a vicious circle which is racing.

This is called a feedback loop with multiplying effects.

And it is also at the heart of the cry of alarm that scientists are constantly raising, as in the latest IPCC report, at the end of February, which has been largely ignored.

So many teams of researchers like the CNRS, Laval University in Quebec are studying these feedback loops.

Some forecasts speak of several degrees of increase in temperatures directly due to this melting.

And so, like in other feedback loops, like the North Atlantic Current, that's at the heart of the climate change phenomenon and so the impact could be exponential."