Arctic nations are promising to avoid new "Cold War" scrambles linked to climate change, but military activity is stirring in a polar region where a thaw may allow oil and gas exploration or new shipping routes.
Permafrost thaw and microbial decomposition is considered one of the most likely positive climate feedbacks from terrestrial ecosystems to the atmosphere in a warmer world, but the rate of carbon release from permafrost soil remains highly uncertain.
A rise in concentrations of a powerful greenhouse gas over the Arctic after a decade of stability is stirring worries about a possible thaw of vast stores trapped in permafrost, experts said.
Experts Worry Melting Permafrost May Release More Gas
Oslo: A rise in concentrations of a powerful greenhouse gas over the Arctic after a decade of stability is stirring worries about a possible thaw of vast stores trapped in permafrost, experts said.
A team of British adventurers measuring ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic said on Wednesday they did not find the thicker, older ice that scientists expected to be there.
Instead they found only the thinner, predominantly first-year ice that is likely to melt in summer months, in what could be another sign of the impact climate change is having on the Arctic ice sheets.
The Obama administration said on Friday it will keep a Bush-era rule that weakens protection for polar bears' icy habitat and plays down links between the threatened status of the species and climate change.
"Seeing the polar bear's habitat melting and an iconic species threatened is an environmental tragedy of the modern age," US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a telephone briefing.
A $500 million North Atlantic shrimp fishery may be vulnerable to climate change that could disrupt the crustaceans' life cycle and mislead them into hatching when food is scarce, scientists said.
A thaw of the Arctic linked to global warming may slow a drive to get rid of industrial chemicals that are harming indigenous people and wildlife, an expert said on Monday.
