Thawing Permafrost

Subject – Environment

Context – Thawing permafrost cause another pandemic

Concept –

The latest IPCC report has warned that increasing global warming will result in reductions in Arctic permafrost and the thawing of the ground is expected to release greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide.
Defined as ground (soil, rock and any included ice or organic material) that remains at or below zero degree Celsius for at least two consecutive years, permafrost is spread across an area of over 23 million square kilometers, covering about 15% of the land area of the globe.
These permanently frozen grounds are most common in regions with high mountains and in Earth’s higher latitudes—near the North and South Poles.
Permafrost covers large regions of the Earth. Almost a quarter of the land area in the Northern Hemisphere has permafrost underneath. Although the ground is frozen, permafrost regions are not always covered in snow.
Permafrost is composed of rock, sediments, sand, dead plant and animal matter, soil, and varying degrees of ice and is believed to have formed during glacial periods dating several millennia.
Its thickness reduces progressively towards the south and is affected by a number of other factors, including the Earth’s interior heat, snow and vegetation cover, presence of water bodies, and topography.

Immediate effects as permafrost melts due to increasing global temperatures –

The first impacts that are very rapid will affect countries where roads or buildings were constructed on permafrost. The Russian railways are an example.
But the biggest international problem is to do with the potential for organic material, which is now entombed and frozen in the ground. If the ground begins to thaw, this material will become available for microbiota to break down. In some environments, the biota will release carbon dioxide, and in others release methane which is about 25 to 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The total quantity of carbon that is now buried in the permafrost is estimated at about 1500 billion tonnes and the top three meters of the ground has about 1000 billion tonnes.
The world currently emits into the atmosphere, approximately 10 billion tonnes of carbon a year. So, if the permafrost thaws and releases even only one per cent of the frozen carbon in any one year, it can nullify anything that we do about industrial emissions.
Usually, after a forest fire, you expect the forest to grow back in the next 50 years to 60 years. This restores the carbon stock in the ecosystem. But in the tundra, the peat is where the organic material is and this takes a very long time to accumulate. So if we burn peat and release it into the atmosphere, then it will take centuries to restore that carbon stock at ground level.

Can thawing permafrost can release new bacteria or viruses?

Permafrost has many secrets. Recently mammoths were found in the permafrost in Russia. And some of these mammoth carcasses when they begin to degrade again may reveal bacteria that were frozen thousands of years ago.
When the permafrost was formed thousands of years ago, there weren’t many humans who lived in that region which was necessarily very cold.
The number of diseases that you can find in India is much greater than the number of diseases you find in Greenland. The environment now is so much more suitable than during the Ice Age for not just human life, but also the evolution or development of viruses and bacteria.