Rising permafrost temperatures raise emission of the climate-relevant trace-gas methane

Environmental Research Web: Investigations of the Alfred Wegener Institute show that methane-producing micro-organisms react to climate changes Higher temperatures in Arctic permafrost soils alter the community of methane producing microorganisms and lead to an increased emission of methane. Microbiologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute come to this conclusion in the current issue of the periodical Environmental Microbiology. The scientists were able to examine permafrost from the ground of the Laptev Sea, a shallow shelf sea close to the coast of Siberia, for the first time. Caused by overflooding with relatively warm sea water, this so-called "submarine permafrost" is about 10°C warmer than the permafrost on land. It is therefore particularly suited to monitor changes in permafrost soils caused by continuing heating of the Earth's atmosphere.

"If the permafrost soils grow warm or even thaw, dramatic consequences for worldwide climate events might occur," illustrates the microbiologist Dr. Dirk Wagner from the Potsdam Research Unit of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association the importance of permafrost research. "They cover about 25% of the earth's land area and store huge amounts of organic carbon."

…"The studies we were conducting during the last ten years in the vicinity of the Russian-German research station Samoilov in the Siberian Arctic show clearly," summarises Wagner the insights of his long years of work "that the communities of microorganisms react flexible to climate change. Even if the soil is still deeply frozen, the metabolic activity of methane producing microbes is increased with rising temperatures. It is definite evidence for us that the atmospheric warming we can observe leads to an increased emission of the climate relevant trace gas methane in earth's vast permafrost regions even today."

A chunk of permafrost, shot by Nick Bonzey from Corvallis, OR, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License