National Academy of Sciences Seminar on Permafrost Thaw

Since launching our collaboration with the Woodwell Climate Research Center (formerly known as Woods Hole Climate Research Center) last year, we have been working together to better understand the wealth of data about permafrost thaw being collected byWoodwell’s Arctic Carbon Monitoring and Prediction program—and to communicate insights about the implications of these data to a wide audience.

In that connection, John Holdren, Arctic Initiative CoFounder and Co-Director, organized a seminar for the 2020 annual meeting of the National Academyof Sciences on Thawing Arctic Permafrost: Regional and Global Impacts. This session highlighted the threat thawing permafrost poses to buildings, roads, and pipelines, and communities due to increased erosion, as well as the wider consequences of the release of carbon dioxide and methane by the decomposition of previously frozen organic matter.

There is estimated to be something like 2.5 times as much carbon in the permafrost as in the entire global atmosphere; the key question is how fast it will come out. There is great uncertainty about the answer, but, at the high rates of release that appear possible over the decades ahead, the pace of climate change worldwide would be accelerated and the chances of keeping the global average temperature increase below 2 degrees celsisu would be reduced. The panelists, who came from both the Kennedy School and Woodwell teams, , explained the complex science of thawing permafrost and elucidated the implications both regionally and globally.