Oni Science
  • Home
  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Nature
  • Physics
  • Space
  • Tech
  • Video
  • Contact Us
    • About us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Amazon Disclaimer
    • DMCA / Copyrights Disclaimer
Skip to content
Oni Science
Your Daily Science News
  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Nature
  • Physics
  • Space
  • Tech
  • Video
  • Contact Us
    • About us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Amazon Disclaimer
    • DMCA / Copyrights Disclaimer
Environment

There’s Trouble Bubbling Up in Newly Formed Alaskan Lakes, And Scientists Are Worried

September 23, 2022 by admin 0 Comments

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Pinterest
Share on LinkedIn

Lakes appearing in Alaska because of melting permafrost are “belching” methane into the atmosphere, a scientist working with NASA said.

These lakes, called thermokarsts, are so full of the climate-damaging gas that it can be seen bubbling to the surface.

More and more of these lakes are appearing as Alaska’s permafrost thaws with rising temperatures and increasing forest fires, according to a 2021 study.

NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) project is studying their effect on climate change, according to a NASA blog post published Thursday.

Thermokarsts are born after the earth thaws and collapses

Thermokarst lakes appear when permafrost, ground that is meant to stay frozen throughout the year, starts to melt.

As this happens, massive blocks of ice that are wedged into the ground also melt, which causes the ground to collapse several feet.

“Years ago, the ground was about three meters taller and it was a spruce forest,” said Katey Walter Anthony, an ecologist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, describing a thermokarst called Big Trail lake in Alaska.

Walter Anthony has been working with NASA’s ABoVE project to study Big Trail lake’s effect on climate change.

Methane bubbles on the surface of an Alaskan lake.
Methane bubbles appear on the surface of Big Trail Lake. (Sofie Bates/NASA)

As water invades the sinkholes left behind, so do bacteria.

“At Big Trail Lake, it’s like opening your freezer door for the first time and giving all the food in your freezer to microbes to decompose,” said Walter Anthony.

“As they decompose it, they are belching out methane gas,” she said.

There are millions of lakes in the Arctic, but most are thousands of years old and don’t give off much gas anymore, per the NASA blog post.

It’s only the newer lakes, like Big Trail, which appeared less than 50 years ago, that give off high levels of the gas.

And this is far from a small amount.

Insider previously reported that these type of lakes gives off so much methane that it is easy to set them alight after a quick jab in the ice, as can be seen in the video below.

frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen>

Methane is a devastating greenhouse gas

Though carbon dioxide (CO2) remains the main long-term driver of the climate crisis, methane leaks have become a hot-button issue for helping control climate change in the short term.

Methane is a greenhouse gas, meaning it keeps heat that is radiating from the ground trapped in the atmosphere instead of letting the Earth cool down.

It is much more potent than CO2, about 30 times more effective at trapping heat. But it also dissipates more quickly than CO2, which lingers in the atmosphere, per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“Reducing methane emissions is an important tool we can use right now to lessen the impacts of climate change in the near term, and rapidly reduce the rate of warming,” Rick Spinrad, the head of NOAA, previously said.

Methane also “contributes to ground-level ozone formation, which causes roughly 500,000 premature deaths each year around the world,” Spinrad said.

Human activities like agriculture, fuel exploitation, and landfills are big contributors to methane emissions.

For instance, gas leaks from methane pipeline are increasingly being targeted because they can be spotted from space and are easily fixable.

But natural sources such as wetlands can also be big contributors of methane, per NOAA.

Understanding how they could progress is important because rising temperatures could cause a “feedback loop” that “would largely be beyond humans’ ability to control,” NOAA said in April.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

More from Business Insider:

This article was originally published by Sciencealert.com. Read the original article here.

Articles You May Like

Embers of an Ancient Inferno Pinpoint The Worst Extinction in Earth’s History
Physicists Used Sound Waves to Give a Tiny Sun Its Own Kind of Gravity
Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
The Mysterious Asymmetry of Jupiter’s Asteroids May Finally Be Explained
This Small Australian Marsupial Is Quite Literally Dying For Sex

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Articles

  • A Hidden Food Web Exists in The Desert, And It Thrives on Death
  • It’s Possible Neanderthals Evolved So They Wouldn’t Smell Their Own Stink, Study Finds
  • We Can Now Hear The ‘Sound’ of One of The Most Beautiful Stars
  • Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
  • Astronomers Find What May Be a Habitable World 31 Light-Years Away
  • Bar Graphs Induce a Hidden Bias in Interpretation, Experiment Shows
  • This Small Australian Marsupial Is Quite Literally Dying For Sex
  • ‘Polluted Realism’: How Monet’s Art Mirrors The Evolution of Smog
  • The First Stars May Have Been Heavier Than 100,000 Suns
  • An Incredible Thing Happens When Dolphins And Humans Team Up

Space

  • We Can Now Hear The ‘Sound’ of One of The Most Beautiful Stars
  • Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
  • Astronomers Find What May Be a Habitable World 31 Light-Years Away
  • The First Stars May Have Been Heavier Than 100,000 Suns
  • Stunning Green Comet Will Be Closest to Earth Today, at Peak Brightness

Physics

  • A Lost Interview With The ‘Father of The Big Bang’ Was Just Discovered
  • This Physicist Says Electrons Spin in Quantum Physics After All. Here’s Why
  • Physicists Break Record Firing a Laser Down Their University Corridor
  • Scientists Have Built a Macroscopic Tractor Beam Using Laser Light
  • Firing a Laser Into The Sky Can Divert Lightning, Experiment Shows

Archives

  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • March 2017
  • November 2016

Categories

  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Nature
  • Physics
  • Space
  • Tech
  • Video

Useful Links

  • Contact Us
  • About us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Amazon Disclaimer
  • DMCA / Copyrights Disclaimer

Recent Posts

  • A Hidden Food Web Exists in The Desert, And It Thrives on Death
  • It’s Possible Neanderthals Evolved So They Wouldn’t Smell Their Own Stink, Study Finds
  • We Can Now Hear The ‘Sound’ of One of The Most Beautiful Stars
  • Astronomers Studied More Than 5,000 Black Holes to Figure Out Why They Twinkle
  • Astronomers Find What May Be a Habitable World 31 Light-Years Away

Copyright © 2023 by Oni Science. All rights reserved. All articles, images, product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement unless specified. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Powered by WordPress using DisruptPress Theme.