Permafrost Thickness at a Thermokarst Lake
Arctic Ice Melting, Permafrost Degassing, Oil Exploration Interacting with Climate Change
Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Teacher & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
For the world’s people, preoccupied with more immediate problems of politics and war, and for most, preoccupied with making a daily living, the Far North seems remote and unimportant. But various phenomena going on there are exceedingly important for our children and grandchildren. Arctic ice is melting, the permafrost is melting, oil exploration is disruptive, sea-level rise is occurring, plants and animals are impacted, etc.
Something like one-fourth of the earth’s surface has been frozen since the last Ice Age. Over much of this area, there is a brief thaw in summer. Some small plants grow, and then are frozen at the end of the growing season. The cycle is repeated next year, without complete decay of the plants that grew the previous year. This results in storage of carbon in the material growing year after year, and has accumulated since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago.
As the reader probably knows, the rate of global warming in the Far North is twice the warming of the earth as a whole. As a result vast stretches of Northern Canada, Alaska, Russia, the Scandinavian Countries and Greenland are melting. So the plants decay, soil slumps, getting into streams, and is washed to the ocean. Both decomposition in place and in the ocean result in carbon dioxide being formed where there is oxygen, and in methane being formed below the surfaced and in deep water, where there is little oxygen. These are the two most important global warming gases and they move up into the atmosphere.
The process causes “positive feedback,” giving even more warming due to the greenhouse gases society dumps into the atmosphere as a result of burning hydrocarbons. The danger is that the melting permafrost will reach a rate where release is self- sustaining. That is a situation where global warming gas release from permafrost is enough to keep it going by itself or worse, to balloon the amount going into the atmosphere uncontrollably. It has been calculated that there is about two times as much carbon in the permafrost as in the atmosphere now.
Removing green house gasses from the atmosphere is not feasible. Three factors are responsible: there is no chemical mechanism available, which is often mentioned; the separation of 0.04% of anything from a mixture requires great energy, and thirdly, the separation of carbon from oxygen requires huge amounts of energy, more than is obtained when they are combined. Our burning of fossil fuels is on a huge scale; and, the energy needed to reverse the process is far more.
Permafrost melting is a new, major area of scientific study. Researchers with the Northwest Territories Geological Survey of Canada have identified an area as large as Alabama which is undergoing extensive thawing. Their objective was to identify and map places in the Northwest Territories where thawing permafrost is going on.
Researchers from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom observe large areas of permafrost change in one area of Russia. One observation was a half mile swath that has collapsed 280 feet. These observations frequently find very uneven terrain, which has been called “thermokarst.” It can be recognized from aerial photography. A single pit can muddy a stream for miles.
Life is difficult for the four million inhabitants of this area, many of whom depend on local resources for survival. Warmer water and sediment loads are harming lake trout, and changes in the land surface are disrupting caribou breeding and migration.
At the shore, two changes combine. The Arctic Ocean now has much less ice cover, particularly in the warm season. This allows winds to build up larger waves. Larger waves combining with melting permafrost allows much greater erosion of the shorelines. The result is rapid retreat of shorelines and huge amounts of carbonaceous material to decompose going directly into the Arctic Ocean.
Shipping routes between Europe and the orient are significantly shorter than through the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal, so as ice disappears, more traffic is expected to cross the top of the earth. Then ice bergs in route, and possible fuel spills will be a problem. Cleaning up spills is much more difficult at the top of the world, where there is 24 hour darkness much of the year, ice to work around and few settlements. A constantly changing shoreline and near freezing and below temperatures don’t help either.
The arctic is estimated to have about one fourth the world’s remaining untouched oil and gas reserves. Only Russia and Norway are making progress toward developing this resource at present. Doubtless, the long Russian shoreline on the arctic (see here) and their experience accounts for ExxonMobile’s interest in Russia and Rex Tillerson’s friendly relations with the Russian oil industry personnel and Vladmir Putin. (Incidentally, Putin wrote his Ph. D. dissertation on making Russia great by exporting oil and gas.) Developing oil and gas in this delicate environment, where spills could be catastrophic, and with even more carbon dioxide being produced should be a no-no.
Disappearance of the ice in the Arctic is a direct problem, too. The ice is an effective reflector of the sunlight that reaches the area. When it reaches the darker land and open ocean it is adsorbed, increasing the temperature of rocks and open water, in turn melting more ice.
The seven nations that border the Arctic Ocean are: Canada and Russia, with the longest shorelines, Denmark (which controls Greenland), Norway and the United States (Alaska), somewhat shorter shorelines, and shorter coastline Finland and Iceland. This spring the U. S. will take over the leadership of the Arctic Council, which includes the previous seven and Sweden. It uses high level negotiations and studies, but can’t make law. Canada holds the post presently.
The nations say they want sustainable development. How much environment and climate concerns will influence them remains to be seen. It is sure the economic and strategic importance of the area will increase.
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