• Thawing permafrost will release carbon to the atmosphere that will have an appreciable additional effect on climate change, adding at least one quarter of a degree Celsius by the end of the century and perhaps nearly as much as one degree (about 1.5°F).

• The permafrost feedback response to our historic emissions, even in the absence of future human emissions, is likely to be self-sustaining and will cancel out future natural carbon sinks in the oceans and biosphere over the next two centuries.

• Unfortunately, there are several good reasons to consider the outlook in this study as rosy — as the authors themselves make clear. However, as bad and inevitable as they are, feedbacks from the permafrost are just the (de-)frosting on the fossil fuel cake that we are busy baking. It is still up to us to influence how severe climate change is going to be.

by Andy Skuce, via Skeptical Science

Many papers have looked at the expected contribution of thawing permafrost to climate change. For example, Schaeffer et al. (2011) and Schuur and Abbott (2011) have both published estimates of the effect that the thawing and decomposition of organic matter in Arctic soils will have on future climates. Aspects ...

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