Wednesday, November 01, 2017

The Arctic is warming up

It's warming up twice as fast as the global average. You can see the result in the shrinking ice. But, perhaps what you can't see is a bigger problem. The Permafrost, which covers 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere, is melting.  As a result, the ground warps, folds, and caves. Roadways built on top of permafrost have becoming wavy roller coasters through the tundra. Long-dormant microbes — some trapped in the ice for tens of thousands of years — are beginning to wake up, releasing equally ancient C02, and could potentially come to infect humans with deadly diseases. And the retreating ice is exposing frozen plants that haven’t seen the sun in 45,000 years.

And it's getting worse. “In the 1980s, the temperature of permafrost in Alaska, Russia and other Arctic regions averaged to be almost 18°F,” the U.S. Geological Survey explained in 2015. “Now the average is just over 28°F.”

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