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We met with Jason Vogel and his colleague, Ted Schuur. They were setting up carbon dioxide ”traps” that measures how much carbon dioxide that the melting permafrost emit, and how this is effected by global warming.

Melting permafrost really triggers two processes, one is that plants can start to grow on land that before has been frozen – this will bind carbon dioxide from the air. The other is the freeing up of dead frozen organic matter for microbes to eat on – which is a process that emits carbon dioxide into the air. Researchers have been uncertain as to which effect is stronger, and thus also if melting permafrost is a net emitter or sink for carbon dioxide.

Jason and Teds’ research has shown that, up until a certain level of melting, the carbon dioxide binding effect is bigger, which means that areas that are melting bind, or sink, more carbon dioxide than it emits. When the planet warms up more, however, the melting reaches a tipping point, and the emitting effect takes over – this is now happening in many areas in the northern hemisphere.

Totally there is more than 500 million tons of coal stored up in the permafrost areas of the planet, which is equivalent to about 60 years of annual human carbon emissions at today’s levels. If we continue to warm up the planet, and it would result in melting of the earth’s permafrost, we are in other words looking forward to 60 years of stored up emissions. Time to act?

Out on the ice of 8-mile Lake (a few kilometers away from the bus in the movie “Into the Wild”) we met with Katey Walter and Laura Brosius, two researchers from University of Alaska Fairbanks that are studying thawing permafrost and methane emissions from Arctic lakes. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is up to 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide – and thus very relevant for studies of climate change.

Many of you readers have probably read or heard about that global warming threatens to thaw the large expansions of permafrost in the northern hemisphere (21 % of total landmass), which then will release massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It is Katey’s research that lies behind this discovery and her results has been given worldwide attention. We spent two days out on the tundra to take part in, and learn more about, the research.

Researchers used to believe that the arctic lakes didn’t account for much emissions – that until Katey together with Russian scientist found out that large amounts of methane are constantly released thru bubbling from lakes in Siberia. They started to investigate this phenomenon and found that “hot-spots” that were releasing methane could be found in waters all over the Arctic region. Methane is second only to carbon dioxide in contributing to the global warming of the latest 100 years, and Kateys research indicates that those emissions might be even larger than we currently believe. The Arctic regions share of global methane emissions might be as much as 64 %, and not the earlier estimated 10 %.

The permafrost of the northern hemisphere contains more organic material than all the worlds rainforests taken together. Before the last ice age big forests were growing here and there was plentiful of animals around. Dead organic matter was trampled down in the ground and stored up over time, when the ice age then arrived all this was frozen down and made the Arctic a large storage of organic matter. When the climate is now warming up, this storage becomes accessible to microbes that can feed of the organic matter – a process that produces methane or carbon dioxide as a side effect. When the feeding take place under water methane is produced and this was exactly what we studied out on 8-mile Lake.

We collected various types of organic material from land – such as leaves and pines – and organic material from water plants. We also put up methane traps to capture the methane bubbles released from hot-spots in the lake and store this gas on bottles. In the laboratory the researchers then studies the gas and the organic material to determine how much of the methane that comes from the permafrost, water plants and land plats respectively. This information is needed to create a model for this part of the methane cycle - that then is going to be implemented in climate models used to for example by the IPCC.

This methane process has historically been taking place over very long periods of time, and the climate has thus had time to adapt. As an effect of human caused climate change, however, the lakes are now expanding fast (14 % in the last few decades). Big areas under water, together with accelerated thawing, leads to more methane emissions – and if this process is not dampened the methane emissions might accelerate global warming considerably.

To take part in Kathey’s and other scientists’ research out on the field, and learn more about how climate change is affecting the planet, is indescribably interesting and exciting. Standing out there on the lake, watching the stunning scenery and understanding how interconnected everything is, I thought about how weird the climate discussion is today. We complain about costs and protect national and industrial self interest – while the worlds researchers are telling us that we are about to press the climate system out of control and that we humans actually might ruin the beautiful and invaluable planet we all inhabit.

Even if the risk that humans are causing a global climate change would be just a few percent (and not over 90 % as the IPCC tells us), it should be enough to make us act boldly and decisively. A low carbon society is urgently needed and it’s time to start constructing it now!

In the United States a total of 400 weather stations are releasing a combined number of no less than 800 weather balloons every day into the sky, 365 days a year. All the weather stations are connected to the World Meteorological Organization, a global cooperation between 188 countries that coordinates over 10 000 weather stations globally. Each and every one of those stations is releasing two balloons daily, at the exact same time in every country. The balloons are measuring things that affect the weather – like temperature, humidity and wind speed. Data from those measurements are then used as the basis for weather forecasts, and by scientists working with related issues - like climate change.

A few days ago we met with John Heidelburg that works at one of those weather stations – a station of special interest for climate research since it’s located in the Arctic region. Together we carried out a launch of a weather balloon, and John also walked us thru the weather station and its different functions. One of the things they do is collecting data on temperature measurements.

In the Arctic part of Alaska the annual mean surface temperature have increased by 2,3 degrees Celsius since 1949, compared to a global average for the period of around 0,6-0,7. There are many reasons behind that the Arctic is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the planet – the most important being the ice-albedo effect. This effect arises because snow and ice reflect a lot more of the sunlight that hits it than do bare land. Basically bare land is absorbing heat instead of reflecting it back, and thus the heating accelerates when the snow and ice-cover melts. Other reasons include the incoming angle of the sunrays and the increased heat that the oceans bring in to the Arctic when the world’s oceans heat up.

The powerful heating in the Arctic region might come to cause major consequences in the rest of the world. Researchers like John are now waiting with great anxiety for this coming summer to witness what will happen in this region. New research from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the North Pole might be ice free already this year. Those prognoses are based on a worst-case scenario, but most researchers I meet are convinced that this will happen sometime during the coming five years.

 
There is still a lot of snow and ice in the Arctic - but for how long?

An ice free north pole will probably be followed by an ice free Arctic Ocean in the summer time within a few decades. All this ice is floating on water, and when it melts the sea levels will not rise. If we continue to dump greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, however, we will accelerate the global warming and the ice sheet on Greenland might melt – which is land ice and will result in a global sea level rise of over seven meters.

In other words, it’s time to act seriously on Climate Change- WorldChanging and TED is good places to start and get inspiration in this work.

The pack ice over the North Pole is retreating with an alarming speed. Last year the record for ice retreat from 2005 was beaten by some 1,19 million square kilometers – the new record is thus smaller by an area the same size as five times the whole United Kingdom. This retreat accelerated the trend of dropping ice sheet cover and in the worst case scenario the ice might be completely gone during summers in as little as six years.

When the ice retreats, it has effects in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to comprehend. The melting affects animals and humans, it has impacts on culture and thru rising sea levels on societies globally, it even has effects on history.

The rising temperatures up here make the permafrost melt and when it does, the land become less stable. The number of ice free days are increasing during summer, which means more days for the water to erode the land and when the ice retreat further away from the shore bigger waves form during storms and this further increases the erosion. At present the erosion in some places in the Arctic region has gone from one meter per year up to six meters in a few decades and the water is now eating up the land in an accelerating pace.

A researcher studying erosion and its effects

A few years ago researchers up here got reports of findings of human remains in one of the spots with the highest rate of erosion – Point Barrow. Archeologist went out to study this and they found out that there was an old Inupiat graveyard that was being washed away into the ocean, some graves over 1 200 years old. What this means is that the history of the Inupiat people is being destroyed due to global warming. A big project has been started to excavate the area and recover historical artifacts as well as rebury the bones at new sites further inland.

 
We visited the excavation site out on the ice

It is an extremely fascinating and moving experience to witness and understand how interconnected everything is. Think about it for a while – we burn fossil fuels somewhere in the world and it increases global warming, which will impact the life of frogs in Costa Rica, Inupiat history in Alaska and rice fields on islands in the Pacific Ocean. We live in a global world and everything we do will have global consequences, it is now time to acknowledge and act according to this fact. Luckily this global interconnectivity also works for positive things; if we develop new fossil-free solutions we can disperse them globally and achieve global improvements. The world therefore needs more climate entrepreneurship and climate innovation.

Today I met up with George Divoky at the Barrow Global Climate Change Research Center. George has, for over thirty years, been studying a colony of Guillemot birds at a remote island in the Arctic Ocean, a unique piece of research that show how global warming is indeed affecting the very conditions of life.

In the early 1970s huge reserves of oil was found in Alaska and plans to construct the Trans Alaskan Pipeline was made. Environmental organizations protested and the region became the center of a wild debate. In conjunction with this, George first visited Cooper Island - the island that would become his summer home for the next thirty years. He became fascinated by the few Guillemot birds inhabiting the island and a study that would last for decades and count over 125 thousand bird measurements was started.

Without knowing it at the time, George started his research in an area that would eventually be the one witnessing the most dramatic rise in temperatures on the planet between 1972 and today, something that makes this island a unique place to study the effects of global warming.

The birds on Cooper Island are dependent on the pack ice for hunting the most important part of their food intake; Arctic Cod. When, in late summer, the baby birds are born after the nesting period their parents fly out to the pack ice to gather food. When George started his research the pack ice during those late summer months was around 11 kilometers off shore, today the ice can retreat as much as 400 kilometers during this time. This means that the birds can no longer reach out and hunt the Arctic Cod and this change can easily be seen in his research.

Because of the gradual change to a less nutritious diet, the baby birds have a more difficult time to grow strong, which has made the population drop dramatically. The breeding success rate has dropped from 50 % to an average of around 10 %, this means that only one out of ten eggs actually become a full grown Guillemot. Gorge has even witnessed starving baby birds refusing to eat the sub-arctic diet offered by their parent, and that their intuition tells them is wrong. The desperate parents then have to force them to eat.

For George and his assistants the effects of climate change in the Arctic is obvious and alarmingly rapid. When they started their research they always used to dig holes in the ground and use the permafrost as a natural freezer for food. As the years went by they had to dig deeper and deeper as the permafrost was melting due to global warming, in 2005 they never hit the permafrost but ended up with hitting water at the bottom. Geroge says; ”I used to think about that my children would experience a completely different arctic region. Now I see those changes happening while I’m still here, it’s unbelievable the speed at which the climate is now changing.”

Read more about the research on Cooper Island

I’m now located at BASC – Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, a research station in northern Alaska, just where the Arctic Ocean starts. At the station, a former US Marine military base from the cold war, between 10-70 researchers work with developing our understanding of climate change and its effects.

When we humans dump over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, it’s not only those emissions that affect the climate, a chain effect of other mechanisms are also triggered and the climate impact spread like rings on water. The sorts of mechanisms that intensify the climate impact are called “positive feedback mechanisms” and they play a vital role in modern climate research.

In order to understand the climatic systems, and to construct more accurate climate models that enables us to predict future effects on the climate, many researchers work with trying to understand those feedback mechanisms. If the direct global warming from emissions of greenhouse gases becomes strong enough, we’ll risk triggering massive positive feedback mechanisms and a situation where the balance in the climate system face a total collapse. During our expedition to the Arctic we will meet many scientist that work with this. We met one of them today, namely Chris Petrich from University of Alaska Fairbanks.

There are a lot of snow and ice up here and when the sunrays hit the white surface most rays are reflected back again, almost everything from the snow and about 65 % from the sea ice. This effect thus limits the warming effect that the sun has on the planet. When the climate is now warming up due to global warming, snow and ice melt and water ponds form on the ice. Those water ponds are better at absorbing the incoming sun and reflect only about 30 % back again - which means that they store more heat on the surface of the earth. More heat leads to more melting, which leads to bigger water ponds, and so on.

What Chris’ research is about is to study how ponds form and how they are affected by snowfall, wind and the thickness of the snow that gathers on top of the sea ice. Today we’ve been accompanying Chris to the area where measurement data is being collected. To reach this place we rode skidoos far north out on the Arctic Oceans’ sea ice.

We used instruments to collect data on the ice and snow thickness as well as different features in the terrain. It’s fascinating to meet scientists that are really passionate about helping the world better understand climate change. Every day they spend hours in freezing cold weather, biting wind and in a constant risk of encountering polar bears. Usually you have bear guards with you though; we had three well built Inupiat guys with big shotguns with the group.

The researchers are doing their best to understand the climate system and their message is that we have to stop dumping 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. It’s now up to us non-scientists to open our eyes and act in whatever our role in society is.

When the Inupiat, the native population in this part of the Arctic, talk about climate change and lifestyles they, on the other hand, relate to the very fundaments of life and culture, and how this fundaments now are being affected directly by what’s happening to our climate.

Self sufficiency thru hunting has always been a central aspect of the life and culture of the Inupiat, for thousands of years they have hunted animals like walruses, seals and whales in order to survive. Still today, hunting accounts for a large portion of the food intake for many Inupiat families. The sea ice plays a very important role in this life, it is from the ice that the people hunt seals and whales in the spring, and it’s on large chunks of sea ice that the Inupiat hunt walrus in the autumn. The latest decades things has started to change though, the spring come earlier and the autumn sea ice sets later and later in the fall. All people we meet witness about dramatic changes in the climate and their conditions of living.

Diana Tigigsruaq, an older Inupiat woman, tells me that the sea ice now is only 3ft in the spring, compared to 8ft when she was young. People are now scared to venture out on the ice, which make the hunt becomes more difficult and risky. Last spring a group of hunters actually got trapped out on the ice when it broke up much earlier than normal.

The hunting season on some animals has become 50 % shorter due to a warmer climate, Diana tells me. She is very worried over what’s now happening with the environment, and what effects this will have in the long run on the Inupiat culture and society – “will we at all be able to live here in the same way as we have done before?”

Qaiyaan Harcharek, a young 26 years old man, talks about how the climate has been changing dramatically during his relatively short life. The seasons doesn’t come and go as the used to, and a strange, unpredictable, weather has characterized life for Qaiyaan and his village for the last few years. Last autumn, barely any sea ice at all floated in to the village, as it usually does when ice formation kicks off around October. Instead the sea ice was formed in late December from snow and cold temperatures; this made the traditional walrus hunt simply impossible.

Qaiyaan is convinced that humans are responsible for climate change and when we discuss solutions he says that wind power might be interesting; “it’s very windy up here”. He would also love a solar powered skidoo.

This is people that experience real lifestyle changes due to global warming, this is something completely different from the painless changes that are talked (sometimes whined) about in many other countries. Perhaps it’s time to think seriously about what effects an out-of-control climate change can have on our lives, and how we as individuals can support a development that will allow people to live their lives sustainable and with a high quality of life, regardless if it’s the Arctic, Europe or China that we call our home.

Finally I'm off to the Arctic! It's now 09.07 and I'm boarding my flight to Amsterdam in a few minutes. Later today I'm meeting up with the other ambassadors and tomorrow we fly to the Arctic. Keep an eye on this blog for updates on all polar bears and stuff. Swedish readers can buy Dagens Industri tomorrow (29/04) and read an article about me.

All the best
Jakob