global warming news - Global Warming Threatens Arctic Feedback Loops - Greentech Media

His research indicates that "we've just detected the first signs of release of deep methane" from sub-sea permafrost beds in the East Siberian Sea and Laptev Sea, driven by a slow warming of ocean waters that may or may not be connected to global warming, he said. While Semiletov said he couldn't predict the worst would happen based on his current data, the melting of the world's subsea permafrost could triple the atmosphere's current share of methane, which would be "enough for a climate catastrophe," he said – that is, an average global temperature increase of up to 6 degrees Celsius. More research is needed to find out whether recent warming trends, rather than the slow warming the ocean has been undergoing over thousands of years, is playing a role in the release of methane, Semiletov said. But when it comes to the link between rising temperatures and the shrinking Arctic ice sheet, there's a clear feedback loop in place, said Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo. The shrinking of sea ice – a trend that received a lot of attention in 2007, when the Arctic saw a 36 percent drop in ice cover – means there is less white ice and snow to reflect sunlight, and more dark water to absorb it, she said. As the shrunken core of summer ice is smaller and thinner, it fails to grow as much during the winter, which means the next summer's shrinking is even worse – a feedback loop that may represent "a new stage" for the polar ice cap, she said.

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