Our world is warming. This does not mean that every point on the planet is warming; it is an average change where some folks, like Pamela in the midwest, may see the occasional cooler weather, while folks here in the Northwest are suffering never before experienced heat. The overall rise of a fraction of a degree includes some places getting a whole lot warmer — places like the Arctic.

Both North America and Siberia are seeing massive thawing of permafrost and warming of rocks like limestone, and as both the rocks and the land warm up, methane that was trapped in the rock is getting released. We expected this to happen with the permafrost; decaying organic material releases methane, and permafrost is a whole lot of now-decaying organic material. We didn’t expect the limestone outgassing. This methane was trapped and frozen within the rock and originated both during and before the formation of the permafrost.

Prior to seeing the limestone outgas, researchers thought that the methane – a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide – would on its own raise the planet’s temp 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. Now, it once again appears our mistake was to underestimate the amount of greenhouse gas waiting to be released, and the actual rise will be higher. According to researcher Froitzheim: The estimated amounts of natural gas in the subsurface of North Siberia are huge. When parts of this will be added to the atmosphere upon thawing of the permafrost, this could have dramatic impacts on the already overheated global climate.

More Information

University of Bonn press release

“Methane release from carbonate rock formations in the Siberian permafrost area during and after the 2020 heat wave,” Nikolaus Froitzheim, Jaroslaw Majka, and Dmitry Zastrozhnov, 2021 August 10, PNAS