Riding the Permafrost Express | NASA Earthdata
Permafrost regions occupy about 20 to 25 percent of the world's land surface, and in parts of northern Siberia, permafrost can be up to a mile (1,600 meters) thick. Scientists and engineers charged with monitoring permafrost along the Qinghai-Xizang railroad's route are primarily concerned with the layer that lies directly above permafrost ...
Global warming is melting the permafrost layer, creating big holes …
Feb 14, 2020 · Abrupt melting of the permafrost layer is leading to erosion, landslides and craters in the Arctic landscape. As the permafrost melts, greenhouse gases are released into the environment. Current climate change forecasts may underestimate the emissions from permafrost because they only take into account gradual thawing of the ice layer.
Academy of Sciences, some permafrost areas on the Tibetan Plateau are 5 to 7 meters (16 to 23 feet) thinner now than they were just 20 years ago. About half the permafrost under the rail bed is "high-temperature" permafrost, which means that the frozen soil is only 1 or 2 degrees Celsius below freezing, according to Zhang.
Melting Russian permafrost could speed up global warming and …
Jul 16, 2019 · “Permafrost warming has the potential to amplify global climate change,” scientist Dr Boris K Biskaborn of the Alfred Wegener Institute, a polar and marine research organization, writes in an article published in the journal Nature. “When frozen sediments thaw it unlocks soil organic carbon.”
Drying in Denali | NASA Earthdata
Dec 27, 2020 · Areas of discontinuous permafrost are particularly vulnerable, because the ice trapped in the soil is near the melting point and thaws easily in response to slight temperature increases. But plants and other ground cover, such as peat, an accumulation of dead and decaying vegetation, can help insulate permafrost.
NISAR Early Adopter Workshop, Day 2: MintPy HyP3 InSAR …
In this video, Jie Chen demonstrates an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) workflow using permafrost data with HyP3 and OpenScienceLab. Access Slides and the Jupyter Book repository from the ASF NISAR Early Adopter Workshop, Day 2: MintPy HyP3 InSAR Permafrost Tutorial.
Leaking Lakes | NASA Earthdata
Dec 28, 2020 · “As permafrost degrades, lakes can drain,” said Grosse, at the Permafrost Laboratory at University of Alaska Fairbanks. In other areas, permafrost thaw results in a sinking land surface where new ponds and lakes form, exposing underlying permafrost to even more warming, thawing, and decay.
From 'tipping points' to 'sleeper species': 2024’s known unknowns …
Dec 17, 2024 · Permafrost comes from the notion of ‘permanently frozen’ ground. In practice, permafrost needs to remain completely frozen for an uninterrupted period of at least two years . It is our largest terrestrial carbon store, holding twice the amount of carbon than is in the atmosphere today, but is currently at risk of tipping into a state of ...
The deadly diseases being released as ice thaws - The World …
May 11, 2017 · Thawing permafrost has also led to greater erosion of river banks where nomads often buried their dead, Kokorin said. Anthrax may not be the only infectious disease lurking in the ice. In 2004, US researchers successfully revived the 1918 Spanish flu – which killed millions of people – from a fragment of a corpse’s lung frozen in the ...
Business on the Edge: Building Industry Resilience to Climate …
Dec 11, 2024 · The business and societal case for investing in resilience and adaptation is increasingly clear. Earth systems—such as ice sheets, ocean currents, and permafrost—are interconnected processes that regulate the planet’s climate, sustain ecosystems, and provide essential services like carbon storage, water filtration, and temperature stabilization.