A NASA scientist said that lakes appearing in Alaska as a result of melting permafrost “belching” methane to the atmosphere.
These lakes, known as thermokarsts are so full of climate-damaging gases that you can see it bubbling to the top.
As Alaska’s permafrost melts and temperatures rise, more and more lakes are being created. Increased forest firesAccording toA 2021 study.
NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment is studying their impact on Climate ChangeAccording to a NASA blog post published Thursday.
Thermokarsts appear after the earth freezes and collapses.
When permafrost (ground that is supposed to stay frozen all year) starts melting, the Thermokarst lake forms.
This causes massive blocks of ice to melt and cause the ground to collapse.
Katey Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, described a thermokarst named Big Trail lake in Alaska.
Walter Anthony is currently working with NASA’s ABoVE to study the impact of Big Trail Lake’s climate change.
As bacteria invades the sinkholes, water also invades them.
Walter Anthony stated, “At Big Trail Lake that’s like opening the freezer door for your first time and allowing all the food in the freezer to microbes decompose.”
She stated, “As it decomposes it, they are belching methane gas.”
According to NASA, there are millions of Arctic lakes, but many of them are thousands of years old, and they don’t emit much gas anymore.
Only the older lakes like Big Trail, which were created less than 50 year ago, emit high levels of gas.
This is not a small amount.
Insider reported previously that this type of lake emits so much methane it is easy for them to be set alight by a quick jab in ice.
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Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is devastating
Despite the fact that carbon dioxide (CO) is a greenhouse gas,2Although ) continues to be the major driver of the climate crisis’s long-term effects, methane leaks are a pressing issue for limiting climate change in the near term.
Methane is a greenhouse gases. This means that heat radiating from the Earth is kept in the atmosphere and not cooled down by the Earth.
It is far more potent that CO2It traps heat 30 times better than CO. However, it dissipates much faster than CO.2The scent of lingering in the air is called “” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA)
Rick Spinrad (head of NOAA) stated, “Reducing methane omissions is an important tool that we can use now to lessen the effects of climate change in near term and reduce the rate of heating.” Previously stated.
Methane “contributes also to ground-level ozoneSpinrad stated that formation is responsible for approximately 500,000 premature deaths per year in the world.
Human activities like agriculture, fuel exploitationLarge contributors to methane emission are landfills,
Methane pipeline leaks can cause gas leakage. Targeted increasingly because They are possible These images were taken from spaceThese are easy to fix.
NOAA also notes that natural sources like wetlands can contribute a lot of methane.
It is crucial to understand how they could advance because rising temperatures could create a feedback loop that “would be largely beyond the human ability to control.” NOAA announced April.
This article was first published by Business Insider.
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