Thawing frozen soils could unleash CO_2 explosion

摘要

The thawing of vast areas of frozen soils and the decay of peatlands under higher global temperatures could release massive volumes of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere - potentially doubling the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases. These revelations put some perspective into the debate about world livestock methane production which has been slowly declining. Frozen soils (cryosols) and peatlands in the Northern Hemisphere are estimated to store up to 50% of the world's organic soil carbon. The upper part of cryosols, which are most at risk of thawing, and peatlands store between 1400 billion to 1850 billion tonnes of carbon. There is currently about 700 billion tonnes of carbon in the earth's atmosphere.