The time bomb of the climate

If the frozen soil melted completely due to climate change, trillions of tons of carbon would be released into the air, causing the earth's temperature to rise much faster than it is now.

The frozen ground covers approximately 20-25% of the land surface in the northern hemisphere. According to scientific calculations, permafrost contains up to 1,600 billion tons of carbon (mainly in the form of organic matter). Meanwhile, the Earth's atmosphere contains only about 825 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ).

The permafrost layer contains more carbon than the atmosphere.(Photo: treehugger.com)

'So far, the permafrost has been considered a place to bury carbon. Carbon in it cannot participate in the carbon transformation cycle in nature. However, global warming could make the Arctic a source of carbon by accelerating the melting of permafrost. Thus, locked up carbon will escape and participate in the natural carbon conversion cycle, 'said Andrew Jacobson, a scientist at Northwestern University (USA).

According to Jacobson, the most worrying thing is that carbon in the permafrost will turn into carbon dioxide (due to oxidation) when the melting rate increases . This phenomenon is very beneficial for the greenhouse effect, causing global temperatures to rise faster. If the greenhouse effect continues to change in a bad way, the permafrost will melt at some point in the future. Many scientists call it "the time bomb of climate change ".