As the Arctic warms, it is causing sea ice and glaciers to melt and permafrost to thaw. It affects humans and animals living in the Arctic, but also weather and climate all over the world. One of the big unknowns is how climate change is affecting permafrost, which is ground that is normally frozen. Thawing permafrost may not sound like a big deal, but as this underground ice and dirt turns to muck, it can expose long-hidden threats to ecosystems, the climate, and our health.
Permafrost is a mix of ice, rocks, soil, and decayed plants that it typically frozen year-round. It can be thousands of years old and extend about a mile below Earth’s surface. It covers approximately nine million square miles of the Northern Hemisphere, an area nearly the size of the United States, China, and Canada combined! As permafrost thaws, it causes roads and buildings to crumble, and large stores of greenhouse gases like methane to be released into the air. Some people think it may be exposing ancient viruses. One aspect that hasn’t been thought of when it comes to thawing permafrost is how the specks of now-unfrozen soil, plant material, bacteria and other microbes could make their way into the air to affect weather. That is exactly what our team of Colorado State University researchers is in Northern Alaska to do!
We recently discovered that permafrost has special specks of material in it that can affect how clouds form. If they make it into the air, these specks called “aerosols” have special properties in that they act like seeds for clouds to form on. Think of a cloud like a forest, it needs these special seeds to form and grow.
