Anyone who’s ever seen a zombie movie can probably imagine what kind of miasma comes from hordes of decomposing bodies, but there is one kind of gas even scarier than whatever might be released by the undead.
Melting permafrost has revealed everything from Scythian graves to unbelievably intact Ice Age megafauna, but something else that has been lurking under frozen ground that was never supposed to melt. New research has now found that “zombie” greenhouse gases could seep through melting Arctic permafrost because of human activity that is causing it to melt and the organic matter in it to decompose. Carbon dioxide and methane had been trapped in undersea permafrost since mammoths and woolly rhinos roamed the Earth—and are now “reanimating”.
The absence of zombies in the George Romero sense might not make this phenomenon sound like nightmare fuel, but depending on how fast the zombie carbon and methane escape from permafrost that succumbs to global warming, it could mean a grim future. Scientists previously had only a vague idea of the rate at which these gases were sneaking out. As if all the other greenhouse gases we put out into the atmosphere aren’t bad enough, a team of researchers from Brigham Young University have gotten a much better idea how fast it is bubbling up from permafrost at the bottom of the ocean.
“The subsea permafrost domain is already contributing regionally and globally relevant quantities of greenhouse gases to the Arctic Ocean and atmosphere in response to paleoclimate changes since the [last Ice Age],” said Sara Sayedi, who led a study recently published in Environmental Research.
Subsea permafrost is not your average permafrost. It is a gargantuan time capsule thought to be still recovering from the shock of a sudden, massive shift in climate some 10,000 years ago. It could also be hiding around 60 billion tons of methane and 560 billion tons of organic carbon. This thick layer of frozen planetary crust is keeping most of that carbon and methane from going anywhere. 140 million tons CO2 and 5.3 million tons of methane still manage to run away each year, and that much is only what is being released by ancient climate change. Human-induced global warming could unfreeze millions, possibly billions, of tons more.
What could happen as the result of humans wrecking the planet could end up being a horror movie in itself. A projection of future emissions generated by (who else) us could mean a gradual release of this invisible zombie over the next 300 years, and that is just based on emissions as they are. Increased emissions could make it more terrifying.
Maybe zombie movies won’t be what keeps you up at night anymore.
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December 27, 2020 at 09:19AM
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Zombie gas could creep through Arctic ice, because climate change is coming for us - SYFY WIRE
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