Depicting environmental milestones abundant again this year in the Arcticwhere experts say that dramatic climate shifts are fundamentally changing the ecosystem and how it functions. One recent turning point for the region involves its carbon footprint: Where conditions in the Arctic have historically worked to reduce global emissions, they are now actively contributing to them.
That's a major transition that could affect human, plant and animal life far beyond Earth's northernmost range, warned a group of scientists investigating the appeared in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Arctic Report Card 2024released on Tuesday. The report is an annual assessment of the polar environment, which in recent years has become a major warning sign characterized by unique and ominous observations all related to the increase in temperatures from climate change caused by humans. .
The focus of the latest Arctic assessment was the impact of warmer weather and wildfires on the tundra, a far northern biome typically known for extreme cold, little precipitation and a layer of permanently frozen soil, known as permafrost , covering the land. These features combined have made the Arctic an important carbon sink for millennia, meaning that the region has largely helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide by sequestering into more carbon than it was releasing into the atmosphere.
That has been mainly due to carbon uptake by plants, which regulate atmospheric levels of the molecule through photosynthesis, and a storage process in the permafrost, which captures carbon dioxide in the ground. But warming air temperatures in the Arctic are breaking down permafrost across the tundra, in some cases, significantly. The Arctic report, for example, showed that Alaskan permafrost temperatures in 2024 will be the second warmest on record. That causes the soil to heat up and melt, its carbon stores decaying with it.
NOAA
Research included in NOAA's Arctic report shows that once carbon is stored in the permafrost of the tundra it is released into the atmosphere. In parts of the region, it is occurring at a rate that exceeds the carbon sink and is instead creating a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions – which is of particular concern to conventional scientists. climate at a time when pollution from fossil fuel production already exists. reached its peak.
The same fossil fuels dominate the atmosphere and continue to fuel warning from senior weather and climate officials at the United Nations is promoting emissions in the Arctic, said Rich Spinrad, NOAA administrator, in a statement on the findings of the new report.
“Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is suffering from warming and more wildfires, is now emitting more carbon than it is storing, exacerbating the effects of climate change ,” said Spinrad. “This is one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inappropriately reducing fossil fuel pollution.”
Wildfires in the Arctic has been rampant at unprecedented levels, and that alone is driving up carbon emissions. Researchers suggest the second highest annual number of wildfire emissions north of the Arctic Circle on record in 2024. Along with the release of carbon dioxide and methane gas from permafrost sources , they say net emissions could continue to rise in the area that climate change is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet.
