Data show no sign of methane boost from thawing permafrost

Emissions of carbon dioxide,
but not methane, having risen alongside
warming temperatures in a region of
 northern Alaska, according to an
 analysis of atmospheric measurements
 made at this research station in Barrow.

Decades of atmospheric measurements from a site in northern Alaska show that rapidly rising temperatures there have not significantly increased methane emissions from the neighboring permafrost-covered landscape, researchers reported December 15 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting.

Some scientists feared that Arctic warming would unleash large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, worsening global warming. “The ticking time bomb of methane has clearly not manifested itself yet,” said study coauthor Colm Sweeney, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. Emissions of carbon dioxide — a less potent greenhouse gas — did increase over that period, the researchers found.

Read the ScienceNews story - “Data show no sign of methane boost from thawing permafrost.”