Tag Archives: Siberia

Is it snowing microplastics in Siberia? Russia scientists take samples

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MARCH 19, 20215:14 AMUPDATED 3 HOURS AGO

By Reuters Staff

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-plastic-siberia-snow-idUSKBN2BB19Y

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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian scientists are trying to understand the scale of a potential threat to the environment in Siberia: snow polluted with microplastics that then melts and seeps into the ground.

Scientists at Tomsk State University (TSU) say they have gathered snow samples from 20 different Siberian regions – from the Altai mountains to the Arctic – and that their preliminary findings confirm that airborne plastic fibres are turning up in snow in remote parts of the wilderness.

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“It’s clear that it’s not just rivers and seas that are involved circulating microplastics around the world, but also soil, living creatures and even the atmosphere,” Yulia Frank, scientific director at TSU’s Microplastics Siberia centre, told Reuters.

Microplastics, which are created when bigger pieces of plastic litter break up over time, are increasingly being found in the air, food, drinking water and even Arctic ice. Scientists are increasingly worried they may pose a risk to human health and marine life, though there is no consensus yet on the issue.

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Tomsk scientists have previously found microplastics in the digestive systems of fish caught in Siberian rivers, confirming that they are contributing to polluting the Arctic Ocean with plastic.

“Siberia is absolutely under-researched in this aspect and our (Russia’s) interest in this problem comes late compared to the rest of the world,” Frank said.

Scientists are now studying the snow samples to understand to what degree population density, the proximity of roads and other human activity contributes to the pollution.

Reporting by Dmitry Turlyun; Writing by Maria Vasilyeva; Editing by Alex Richardson

The most dangerous climate feedback loop is speeding up

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In Siberia, the carbon-rich permafrost warmed by 1.6°F in just the last decade.

JOE ROMM
https://thinkprogress.org/dangerous-permafrost-climate-feedback-loop/
AWI permafrost scientists investigate the eroding coastline at the Siberian island Sobo-Sise. CREDIT: Alfred Wegener Institute.
AWI PERMAFROST SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATE THE ERODING COASTLINE AT THE SIBERIAN ISLAND SOBO-SISE. CREDIT: ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE.

The carbon-rich permafrost warmed “in all permafrost zones on Earth” from 2007 to 2016, according to a new study.

Most ominously, Siberian permafrost at depths of up to 30 feet warmed a remarkable 1.6°F (0.9°C) in those 10 years, the researchers found. The permafrost, or tundra, is soil that stays below freezing (32°F) for at least two years.

Permafrost warming can “amplify global climate change, because when frozen sediments thaw it unlocks soil organic carbon,” warns the study, which was released Wednesday by the journal Nature Communications.

The thawing releases not only carbon dioxide but also methane (CH4) — a far more potent greenhouse gas — thereby further warming the planet. And as the planet continues to warm, more permafrost will melt, releasing even more greenhouse gases in a continuous feedback loop.

Thawing permafrost is an especially dangerous amplifying feedback loop because the global permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does today .

In this so-called “drunken forest,” in Alaska, the trees tilt because the once-frozen ground (permafrost) is thawing. CREDIT: NSIDC.

Earth’s thawing permafrost threatens to unleash a dangerous climate feedback loop

Normally, plants capture CO2 from the air during photosynthesis and slowly release that carbon back into the atmosphere after they die. But the Arctic permafrost acts like a very large carbon freezer — and the decomposition rate is very low. Or, rather, it was.

Humanity is leaving the freezer door wide open. As a result, the tundra is being transformed from a long-term carbon locker to a short-term carbon un-locker.

A 2017 study found the Alaskan tundra is warming so quickly it had become a net emitter of CO2 ahead of schedule. That study was the first to report a major portion of the Arctic had already become a net source of heat-trapping emissions.

The lead author, Dr. Roisin Commane, told ThinkProgress at the time, “We’re seeing this much earlier than we thought we would see it.”

NASA’s Land Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) data for April. CREDIT: NASA.

The ‘ancient carbon’ of Alaska’s tundra is being released, speeding up global warming

The new study released on January 16 is the first “globally consistent assessment of permafrost temperature.” Four dozen researchers from around the world found that the ground temperature tens of feet below the surface “increased in all permafrost zones on Earth” — in the Northern Hemisphere, the mountains, and Antarctica.

“My take home [on the new study] is that the anecdotal site thawing that I heard about this winter is part of a region-wide warming that seems to be accelerating faster in this decade than in previous decades,” Dr. Commane told Inside Climate News.

That’s no surprise given that “Arctic air temperatures for the past five years (2014-18) have exceeded all previous records since 1900,” as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in its annual Arctic Report Card last month.

The only surprise is that the world continues to ignore this gravest of threats to humanity, even as it speeds up, triggers amplifying feedbacks, and rapidly approaches a climate death spiral.