#climate feedback loop

A third of the Arctic’s tundra, forests and wetlands have become a source of carbon emissions, a new study has found, as global heating ends thousands of years of carbon storage in parts of the frozen north. For millennia, Arctic land ecosystems have acted as a deep-freeze for the planet’s carbon, holding vast amounts of potential emissions in the permafrost. But ecosystems in the region are increasingly becoming a contributor to global heating as they release more CO2 into the atmosphere with rising temperatures, a new study published in Nature Climate Change concluded. More than 30% of the region was a net source of CO2, according to the analysis, rising to 40% when emissions from wildfires were included. By using monitoring data from 200 study sites between 1990 and 2020, the research demonstrates how the Arctic’s boreal forests, wetlands and tundra are being transformed by rapid warming. “It is the first time that we’re seeing this shift at such a large scale, cumulatively across all of the tundra. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Sue Natali, a co-author and lead researcher on the study at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. The shift is occurring despite the Arctic becoming greener. “One place where I work in interior Alaska, when the permafrost thaws, the plants grow more so you can sometimes can get an uptick in carbon storage,” Natali said. “But the permafrost continues to melt and the microbes take over. You have this really big pool of carbon in the ground and you see things like ground collapse. You can visually see the changes in the landscape,” she said.

In the vast white expanse around Churapcha in eastern Siberia, the ever more rapid thaw of the permafrost is changing the landscape, cracking up houses and releasing greenhouse gases. A growing number of little mounds are appearing across the region of Yakutia in the Russian Far East. Known as "bylars" in the Yakut language, the tiny hillocks are no more than a meter high and have an almost regular polygonal shape. "The peaks of these formations are stable. It is the space between the mounds that is sinking," said Nikita Tananayev, director of the climate laboratory at the Federal Northeastern University in the regional capital Yakutsk. "With climate change, the ice is melting faster," he told AFP. -The mounds' distinctive shape is due to the fact that the underground ice that is melting is shaped in polygons. Permafrost is a layer of soil that is never supposed to thaw and covers around 65% of Russia's territory.

Wildfires are becoming more frequent, larger and more destructive across the globe, and climate change has been identified as a key reason for the escalation. The second annual State of Wildfires report, published by researchers at the University of Melbourne this week, reveals that between March 2024 and February 2025, 3.7 million square kilometres and 100 million people were affected by wildfires worldwide. That amounts to an area larger than India and puts a staggering €183 billion worth of homes and infrastructure at risk. What makes forests more flammable? The report says that climate change is not just creating more dangerous fire-prone weather but is also affecting how vegetation grows and dries, providing more fuel for fires. In South America, the Pantanal-Chiquitano region experienced fires 35 times larger than they would have been in a world without human-induced warming, the report finds. “The deadly Los Angeles wildfires in January were twice as likely and burned an area 25 times bigger than they would have [been] in a world with no human-caused global warming,” says co-author Hamish Clarke, from the University of Melbourne. Few parts of the world were spared from intensifying fire damage. In the authors’ home country, more than 1,000 large fires burned around 470,000 hectares in western Australia, while more than five million hectares burned in central Australia.

Wildfires that blazed around the world in 2024 helped to drive a record annual leap in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, surprising scientists. The data shows humanity is moving yet deeper into a dangerous world of supercharged extreme weather. The CO2 level at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.6 parts per million (ppm) to 427ppm, far above the 280ppm level before the large-scale burning of fossil fuels sparked the climate crisis. The Mauna Loa observations, known as the Keeling curve, began in 1958 and are the longest running direct measurements of CO2. The sharp rise resulted from burning forests adding to continued emissions from coal, oil and gas, which also set a record in 2024. The natural El Niño climate cycle also contributed, by delivering hotter and drier conditions in the tropics. A record rise would probably have occurred even without El Niño though, the scientists said. The global average temperature also set a new record in 2024, worsening the extreme heatwaves, storms and floods that affected billions of people. This meant the planet passed the 1.5C (2.7F) level agreed as a target by the Paris climate agreement for the first time. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, blamed the fossil fuel industry for pocketing profits while their products “wreak havoc”.

The bushfires ravaging Australia are a clear sign of what is to come around the world if temperatures are allowed to rise to dangerous levels, according to scientists.

“This is what you can expect to happen … at an average of 3C [above pre-industrial levels],” said Richard Betts, professor of geography at Exeter University. “We are seeing a sign of what would be normal conditions in a 3C world. It tells us what the future world might look like. This really brings home what climate change means.”

Average temperature rises in Australia were about 1.4C above pre-industrial levels before this season’s fires, showing a more rapid rate of heating than the global average of 1.1C.

Scientists warn that beyond a rise of 2C, the impacts of climate breakdown are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible, yet current global commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement are estimated to put the world on track for 3C of heating.

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Bloody Mary$ / Flickr 

Areas of the Canadian Arctic permafrost are thawing rapidly, 70 years ahead of when scientists previously believed, as the climate crisis continues to push the planet towards dangerous tipping points.

Reuters reported on the change Tuesday citing the June 10 research of University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists like geophysics professor Vladimir E. Romanovsky. In an interview, Romanovsky told the news agency that the change in the Arctic permafrost was “amazing” to witness and “an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.”

Melting permafrost could release potentially catastrophic levels of methane and other gases trapped for millennia into the atmosphere, adding to a feedback loop that could accelerate the climate crisis and lead to more warming. As Common Dreams reported in April, the permafrost is already emitting more gasses than previously thought; the new research indicates that this is part of a larger issue.

The scientists found the change as they visited the Arctic region. According to Reuters:

Diving through a lucky break in the clouds, Romanovsky and his colleagues said they were confronted with a landscape that was unrecognizable from the pristine Arctic terrain they had encountered during initial visits a decade or so earlier.

The vista had dissolved into an undulating sea of hummocks—waist-high depressions and ponds known as thermokarst. Vegetation, once sparse, had begun to flourish in the shelter provided from the constant wind.

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, characterized the rapidly thawing permafrost as “one of the tipping points for climate breakdown” that is “happening before our very eyes,” and another “clear signal that we must decarbonize our economies” without further delay.

One of Romanovsky’s co-authors described the melting permafrost as the “canary in the coal mine.”

Climate Change: Truth, Deception & Denial

By Daniel Margrain

The 2015 National Security Strategy sets out the tier-one threats faced by the UK. These are international terrorism, cyber-crime and climate change. The characteristics of the latter are extreme weather patterns and rising temperatures. These are becoming more frequent and unpredictable.

Nine days before the world’s largest populated city, Shanghai, experienced its hottest…