Carbon trapped in the top few meters of permafrost soils across nearly 19 million square kilometers of northern regions could be released at a rate of about two to five times greater than previous estimates. This is the conclusion of 41 international scientists who publish on various aspects of permafrost. "Studies suggest that there is about 1,700 billion tons of carbon in this upper portion of permafrost, which is twice as much as is now in the atmosphere and four times as much as cumulative fossil fuel emissions since the Industrial Revolution," said Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Daniel Hayes, who contributed to a Comment article published in Nature in December. A warming climate causes permafrost to thaw, rendering this frozen carbon vulnerable to decomposition and emissions to the atmosphere. A significant amount of this carbon could be released as methane, which is about 22 times more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
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