A team of researchers have discovered new evidence confirming that permafrost thawing is releasing copious amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through plants, according to a Florida State University Press release.
Their research was published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We've known for a while now that permafrost is thawing," said Suzanne Hodgkins, the lead author on the paper and a doctoral student in chemical oceanography at Florida State, according to the press release. "But what we've found is that the associated changes in plant community composition in the polar regions could lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere as methane."
Permafrost is soil that is frozen year round and is usually located in polar regions. As global temperatures have increased, that permafrost is thawing and decomposing, which is producing "increased amounts of methane," according to the release.
Methane has a disproportionately large global warming potential. It is 33 times more effective at warming the Earth on a mass basis and a century time scale relative to carbon dioxide.
When plants break down, they release carbon into the atmosphere. If the permafrost melts, there would be five times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere than there is now, said Jeff Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography at Florida State, according to the release.
"The world is getting warmer, and the additional release of gas would only add to our problems," he said.
Research was funded by a three-year, $400,000 Department of Energy grant. Chanton and Hodgkins traveled to Sweden multiple times to collect soil samples for the study.
Researchers from North America, Europe and Australia also contributed to the study, according to the release.
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