While our attention is rivetted for example on the current political battles, we should also have been keeping a wary eye out further North.  

Take water with you to the protests…could be a dry day

We can’t blame Donald Trump for climate change – he denies it exists, in fact, so we must be delusional – but we can sure blame him for diverting our attention from issues that matter, to issues focused on Donald Trump.  While our attention is rivetted for example on the current political battles, we should also have been keeping a wary eye out further North.  

To reverse the Game of Thrones watchword:  Summer Is Coming.

One of the more entangled ways that humans exist with their environment can be found in the frozen North.

When our protests are happening, let’s remember that THIS is why we are protesting against a dictator: so that our children will live in a world where the oceans have not risen, the air can still be breathed, and the temperature is not a searing reprimand to bad choices.

Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon - an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it.  A petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons. That's about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth's soils.  Most of that is within 3 metres (10 feet) of the surface. 

The problem comes because permafrost is not as “perma” as we would think.

It is true and serious that human-induced change is happening across the more populated and warmer areas of the globe, from the US to Europe to Central America and Asia.  Methane (CH₄) is a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat 28 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 100-year timescale, and it is the rise in methane that is driving the temperature spikes around the world. (Editors Note: Methand also traps 86 times more heat than carbon over a 20 year period.)

 

 

This in turn is leading to long-term damage that is cumulative: even though California was hit by massive rains in 2023, they were barely able to keep up with recharging the aquifers drawn down by decades of drought. In 2023, rains fell that were double the average, and added 90 billion gallons of water to the surface reservoirs.  But one-third of the water supply for Las Angeles, for example, comes from groundwater, which was not significantly refreshed by the rains.  The storms of 2023 only added about 25% of the region’s lost groundwater.  

The prospects of a turn-around are bleak.  As noted by the non-profit Job One For Humanity think tank, the climate models used in forecasting our future are not working very well.  They consistently fail to predict the future; they under-rate the change that is going on.

Some of this has to do with the sheer scale of the change.  More than three-quarters of the land on Earth has become drier over the past three decades.  Aridity now stalks 40% of the world's agricultural land and 2.3 billion people, causing intensified wildfires, agricultural collapse and spurring growing mass migrations.  The UN Convention to Combat Desertification warns that if the trend continues, up to five billion people could live in drylands by the century's end — putting new pressure on vital ecosystems and resources.

This is an accelerating trend  -   as temperatures rise around the globe, water evaporates more readily from its surfaces, and the atmosphere gains an ever increasing capacity to absorb it.

In the foreseeable future, nearly three billion people and over half of global food production are facing "unprecedented stress" on their water systems. 

Governments, enabled by the 30 trillion dollar-a-year global fossil fuel cartel's disinformation and lobbying campaigns, tried to lull readers to sleep by failing to act firmly on accelerating global warming and climate change.

Where this comes to an immediately visible warning is in the area most susceptible to added warmth: the Arctic.

The Arctic is warming at three to four times the rate of the rest of the planet. The “active layer” of permafrost – the top part that thaws partially during the summer -  is getting about 10 mm (4 inches) deeper each year.  That does not sound like much…but consider it across a territory that covers half of Canada and Russia, and the optics change.  This is an enormous impact.

 

In addition to the welcome site of formerly frozen animals like mammoths, the new soil also contains ancient viruses and bacteria…disease from the past.

Permafrost also locks up carbon from dead vegetation. 

It is estimated that there are four times the amount of carbon trapped in permafrost than all of the human-generated C02 emissions in history.

The release into the atmosphere of even a small amount of this carbon as methane gas would have a profound effect on the planet. 

The more C02 and methane there is in the air, the warmer the climate will be, and the thicker the active layer of permafrost.  This in turn releases yet more carbon, and methane  and the cycle keeps accelerating.

The underlying low level of change is slowly creeping up on is.

In places, the permafrost gives way in avalanches; “wounds in the earth,” as one Inuit observer says.

A remedy is difficult to pinpoint.  One cold winter will not bring back the permafrost. 

For now, the Inuit are left with the need to build communities that are resilient to changes. 

Storms across Europe last year affected more than 400,000 people, a report has found, as the continent went through its hottest year on record.

Yet the impacts on the Permafrost in the North make that pale in comparison.  When permafrost melts it leads to ground instability, infrastructure collapse, disrupted supply routes, the release of toxic contaminants from the ancient ice, poor water quality, and disturbed plants and animals that result in food security challenges as well as cultural losses.  

Melting Arctic ice also leads to higher tides, worse storms, which can damage homes and property, and a failure in our intricate balance of our food systems

The Arctic is critical to understanding global climate.  Climate change is already happening in the Arctic, faster than its ecosystems can adapt.

A 3 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures could melt 30 to 85 percent of the top permafrost layers that exist across the Arctic region.

(Editors note: A 3°C increase in average global temperature above preindustrial levels is probable between 2040 and 2050 or earlier, if we keep crossing climate chage tipping points and keep pumping more toxic and polluting carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide (the big three greenhouse gases) into our atmosphere.

It would unleash warming gases at a rate we have never seen before.

The warming rise would be unstoppable.

Summer is coming.

 

It's article was created by Barry Gander who is fully responsible for its contact.

Barry Gander is a specialist on the impact of technology on human activities; he publishes a daily column in Substack.

To help do something about the climate change and global warming emergency, click here.

Sign up for our free Global Warming Blog by clicking here. (In your email, you will receive critical news, research, and the warning signs for the next global warming disaster.)

To share this blog post: Go to the Share button to the left below.