The Far North is thawing, unleashing clouds of planet-heating gas. Scientists rely on an arsenal of tech to sniff out just how nasty the problem is.
Sun Golf Course in Fairbanks, Alaska, they say you never get the same shot twice. That’s because the Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet, and as the underground permafrost thaws, it deforms the course’s fairways. This express defrost unlocks ancient organic matter—a lot of it. Microbes feed on that liberated matter and fart out plumes of, a gas that’s 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet.
Nearby lurks a site of particular interest—or dread, depending on how you look at it. Big Trail Lake is the product of a violent, in which permafrost thaws so rapidly that the ground collapses. The resulting craters, filled with water, represent ideal conditions for microbes to produce methane. Indeed, Big Trail Lake may be one of the highest-emitting lakes in Alaska, so the team collects methane data from a floating instrument tower there.
Unlike an array of sensors stuck in one place on the ground, a drone can take samples at varying altitudes and across whole landscapes, providing researchers with a highly detailed map of aerial methane concentrations.
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