Soaring temperatures are rapidly thawing permafrost, leading to huge sinkholes called thermokarst. Northern fires are making the situation even worse.
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quickly in the sun. If the landscape is level, a neat pit of melted ice will form and grow, because water also readily absorbs solar radiation. All the vegetation that was previously locked in the ice will also sink to the bottom of the watery pit, darkening it even more. Permafrost is basically a refrigerator for organic matter—and if it warms and thaws, microbes start to proliferate within it, just as they would on your food if you unplugged your fridge.
At the moment, climate models just aren’t equipped to consider such complexity. “Presently, most studies—especially modeling works—are focused on gradual permafrost thaw, which releases carbon from ground surface,” says Chen. “However, thermokarst formation will expose ancient carbon deep in the soil column to active decomposition. Once initiated, the carbon loss from these horizons may never recover.
Across the Arctic, hotter temperatures are already pockmarking landscapes with thermokarst pits, but climate change is also changing the wildfire “regime,”. Hotter temperatures create more dry fuel, which allows for fires to become bigger and more intense, and therefore more destructive to the ecosystem and underlying permafrost. And while the team’s modeling only looked at northern Alaska, Lara says that this tundra system is similar to others around the world, particularly in Siberia.
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