Most of Earth’s near-surface permafrost could be gone by 2100, an international team of scientists has concluded after comparing current climate trends to the planet’s climate 3 million years ago. The team found that the amount of near-surface permafrost could drop by 93% compared to the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900. That’s under the […]
Permafrost in Alaska has been warming and thawing at an increasing rate. The state is actually sinking a little in places. Soumitra Sakhalkar, a graduate research assistant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, has been using the global navigation satellite system to precisely measure just how much the surface is subsiding in some […]
Standing in the 29-degree air outside a building on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, Josephine Galipon held a pinkie-size vial that may have contained tiny organisms locked in a coma for thousands of years. Galipon, a researcher with Keio University in Japan, needed to work outside a heated room so as not to disturb […]
Thawing Arctic hillsides release a significant amount of organic carbon that has been locked in frozen ground for thousands of years but which now can contribute to an already warming climate, according to new research. The finding comes from the study of hillsides in a far north region of Russia, where the researchers also found […]