High risk of permafrost thaw

In the Arctic, temperatures are rising fast, and permafrost is thawing. Carbon released to the atmosphere from permafrost soils could accelerate climate change, but the likely magnitude of this effect is still highly uncertain. A collective estimate made by a group of permafrost experts, including myself, is that carbon could be released more quickly than models currently suggest, and at levels that are cause for serious concern. While our models of carbon emission from permafrost thaw are lacking, experts intimately familiar with these landscapes and processes have accumulated knowledge about what they expect to happen, based on both quantitative data and qualitative understanding of these systems. We (the authors of this piece) attempted to quantify this expertise through a survey developed over several years, starting in 2009. Our survey asked experts what percentage of surface permafrost they thought was likely to thaw, how much carbon would be released, and how much of that would be methane, for three time periods and under four warming scenarios that are part of the new IPCC Fifth Assessment Report