The Exchanges

Q So, 15% of the global north is covered in permafrost. When we think about the impact of that permafrost starting to thaw, there are a couple of different impacts. One is the impact to structures and people's ways of life, and there's climate change, carbon and methane emissions. Let's talk about the acute impact first to communities. What is the impact?

A So, communities in the Arctic have been feeling the impacts of climate change for a long time now. It's, you know, warming at least three times faster than the rest of the planet in the Arctic, and there's a number of different things that are happening. One of them is permafrost thaw, but I will say, like, permafrost thaw doesn't happen in a bubble. Like, permafrost thaw is related to sea ice loss and erosion and flooding. All of these things contribute, and so You know, when the ground thaws, it, the ice, if there's ice in the ground, which there often is, that ice then turns into water, and so you lose your structure, and so what often happens is you get ground collapse. The ground collapse can be extreme, where you have trees toppling over, but even if it's more subtle, if your house is on permafrost, and you, even a subtle, that impacts your foundation, right? And so people who live on permafrost raise their houses every year, To keep them level. And now we're having to raise them multiple times of year. Um, it's impacting people's ability to travel across the landscape because it gets the ground quite, you know, really mucky and you get a ponding happening. It leads to more coastal erosion because you had this sort of cement, you know, this frozen permafrost. And as that thaws, the coast then becomes more vulnerable, um, to erosion and impact from storm damages. It's also…

AI assessment note: “if your house is on permafrost, and you, even a subtle, that impacts your foundation”

Q And how about the climate impact? What do we know about the carbon and methane stored in permafrost, and why is it stored there?

A There's a lot of carbon in permafrost, and that carbon is currently frozen. Um, it's been accumulating for 10,000 of years, and it's essentially carbon that's been taken up by plants, um, and, you know, the plants die, and when it's really warm, they decompose right away, but in the Arctic, it's cold and it's wet, and so, you know, it's just essentially the thousands of years remnants of ancient plants and also animals, and so that's just been slowly building up over 10,000 of years. Now that it's frozen, um, its microbes now have access to it, and they can break that carbon down. They use it as an energy source, and in the process release greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane.

AI assessment note: “in the process release greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane.”

Q So why is permafrost not getting the attention that it needs to get as part of our global discussions about climate change?

A I think there's a few reasons why. I mean, on the one hand, it's harder to see permafrost than, say, a forest. I mean, you know, I mean, that just seems like quite an obvious thing, but if you think about a satellite, you see imagery you've seen, you know, if you look at, if you go to Google Earth, you know, if you look around the imagery of the Arctic, you're not going to immediately see permafrost. I can see indicators of permafrost, and I can have an idea, but But most people are going to look and they're going to say, I see tundra. Um, but you can see forest. So we can more easily see and measure and monitor carbon that's in a forest. So that's sort of, I guess I'd say one reason why it's not accounted for. But I think the other reason is just this big uncertainty about, you know, what's happening with carbon cycling in the Arctic now. Um, when, um, Will permafrost thaw? And how much carbon will be released when it's, when it thaws? Will it be released as carbon dioxide or methane? And, and it's, it seems like a relatively easy question, but there's so many complicating factors, you know, just because it's this biological process in this complex world, you know, where we're thinking about my, you know, really diverse microbial communities and the Arctic isn't a thing. It's, Many, many different places. Some are forested, you know, some areas have sandy soil, some have reall…

AI assessment note: “I think there's a few reasons why. I mean, on the one hand, it's harder to see”

Q to speed up the science in studying permafrost. You're the lead scientist on the permafrost pathways project. This is a, a new forty-one million dollar grant over six years that is going to help fund permafrost research, help scientists like you get their arms around the scope of the problem. What is the project? What is its goal? And how will it help us propel the science as it stands?

A So the three core components of the project, the first, um, focuses on monitoring and modeling so that we can reduce that scientific uncertainty. So that we can say, are permafrost carbon emissions going to be the size of India, Japan, or the United States, right? We need to, we need to be able to reduce the range of possibilities. Um, and so we'll be setting up new instrumentation across the Arctic to measure The exchange of carbon dioxide and methane between the land and the atmosphere. We'll be using that data in a new modeling framework. We'll be updating the models. We'll be, um, adding in relevant processes into the models that we're working with and working broadly with the scientific community. And so, you know, working with a network of scientists and supporting the scientists that are already out there making a lot of these measurements and trying to build a network so that we can Really do the most that we can with the existing data, build on that data, and really have these, this data inform the models. The goal of this, the monitoring and modeling is to really reduce our uncertainty and permafrost thaw and global impacts of permafrost thaw. The next component of this project has to do with getting that information into the hands of decision makers. And so, you know, Often when we do science, we publish that science in an academic journal, and it kind of sits there.…

AI assessment note: “So the three core components of the project, the first, um, focuses on monitoring”