http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org)—What does pulling a radar-equipped sled across the Arctic tundra have to do with improving our understanding of climate change? It's part of a new way to explore the little-known world of permafrost soils, which store almost as much carbon as the rest of the world's soils and about twice as much as is in the atmosphere. http://phys.org/news276506288.html Space & Earth Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:30:01 EST news276506288 The need for a more sustainable global energy system is more urgent than ever, energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency warned on Monday as UN climate talks went into a second week. http://phys.org/news273746521.html Space & Earth Mon, 03 Dec 2012 08:42:09 EST news273746521 Climate talks got down to the nitty-gritty in Doha on Tuesday as developing countries and the European Union (EU) staked out rival positions on the fate of the Kyoto Protocol. http://phys.org/news273226647.html Space & Earth Tue, 27 Nov 2012 08:30:04 EST news273226647 The Russian Arctic is losing ice cover and being inhabited by species from the south in the latest sign of climate change, according to a group of Russian scientists. http://phys.org/news272726802.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:40:01 EST news272726802 As much as 44 billion tons of nitrogen and 850 billion tons of carbon stored in arctic permafrost, or frozen ground, could be released into the environment as the region begins to thaw over the next century as a result of a warmer planet according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. This nitrogen and carbon are likely to impact ecosystems, the atmosphere, and water resources including rivers and lakes. For context, this is roughly the amount of carbon stored in the atmosphere today. http://phys.org/news270727401.html Space & Earth Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:20:05 EST news270727401 A teenage mammoth who once roamed the Siberian tundra in search of fodder and females might have been killed by an Ice Age man on a summer day tens of thousands of years ago, a Russian scientist said Friday. http://phys.org/news268650124.html Other Sciences Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:02:10 EST news268650124 Global climate change means that recently discovered ancient forests in Canada's extreme north could one day return, according to Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier of the University of Montreal's Department of Geography, who is presenting his findings at the Canadian Paleontology Conference in Toronto today. http://phys.org/news267383310.html Space & Earth Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:00:01 EST news267383310 In the coming century, permafrost in polar regions and alpine forests in the Northern Hemisphere may thaw rapidly, potentially releasing carbon and nitrogen that could cause additional regional warming. Permafrost occurs in soils where ground temperatures remain below freezing for at least two consecutive years. These special types of soil, called Gelisols, are large reservoirs of organic carbon and nitrogen. Thawing is likely to release the carbon and nitrogen in these soils to rivers and lakes, ecosystems, and the atmosphere; different soil types are vulnerable to different thawing processes. http://phys.org/news267338058.html Space & Earth Thu, 20 Sep 2012 05:34:27 EST news267338058 In the far north of Siberia, Russian scientists have stepped up research on a once-secret deposit of diamonds whose scale dwarfs anything ever discovered and could turn world markets "upside down". http://phys.org/news267249193.html Space & Earth Wed, 19 Sep 2012 04:53:29 EST news267249193 In this week's issue of Nature a study lead by Stockholm University, with collaborators from Russia, US, UK, Switzerland, Norway, Spain and Denmark, show that an ancient and large carbon pool held in a less-studied form of permafrost ("Yedoma") is thaw-released along the ~ 7000 kilometer desolate coast of northernmost Siberian Arctic.  http://phys.org/news265551528.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:19:14 EST news265551528 Landslides kill ten times more people across the world than was previously thought, according to research by Durham University, UK. http://phys.org/news264261447.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:00:01 EST news264261447 A team of scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences has just completed an airborne measurement campaign that allowed for the first time to measure large-scale methane emissions from the extensive Arctic permafrost landscapes. The study area extended from Barrow, the northernmost settlement on the American mainland, across the entire North Slope of Alaska, to the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The airborne measurements (Airborne Measurement of Methane - AIRMETH) at a flight level of only 30 to 50 meters above ground addresses two major questions: How much methane is emitted from permafrost areas into the atmosphere? Do well known geological point sources, i.e. the leakage of gas along geologic faults, contribute significantly to the total amount or does the microbially produced methane from the upper soil layers dominate? http://phys.org/news262517267.html Space & Earth Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:27:55 EST news262517267 (Phys.org) -- A group of ecologists from Umea University's Climate Impact Research Centre (CIRC) and VU University Amsterdam have shown that thawing permafrost increases fertility in subarctic peatlands in northern Sweden. This increased fertility may have impacts on plant productivity and species composition. These findings were recently published in the journal Global Change Biology. http://phys.org/news259307688.html Space & Earth Tue, 19 Jun 2012 06:55:03 EST news259307688 Permafrost zones extend over 50% of Canada's land area. Warming or thawing of permafrost due to climate change could significantly impact existing infrastructure and future development in Canada's north. Researchers Jennifer Throop and Antoni Lewkowicz at the University of Ottawa, along with Sharon Smith with the Geological Survey of Canada, have published a new study, part of an upcoming special issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (CJES), that provides one of the first summaries of climate and ground temperature relations across northern Canada. http://phys.org/news254482550.html Space & Earth Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:35:56 EST news254482550 (Phys.org) -- The fragile and rapidly changing Arctic region is home to large reservoirs of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. As Earth's climate warms, the methane, frozen in reservoirs stored in Arctic tundra soils or marine sediments, is vulnerable to being released into the atmosphere, where it can add to global warming. Now a multi-institutional study by Eric Kort of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has uncovered a surprising and potentially important new source of Arctic methane: the ocean itself. http://phys.org/news254319998.html Space & Earth Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:12:31 EST news254319998 The world's best-preserved mammoth, buried about 42,000 years ago, will go on display in Hong Kong this week, the organiser of its first exhibition in Asia said Wednesday. http://phys.org/news253365543.html Other Sciences Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:19:15 EST news253365543 (PhysOrg.com) -- Satellite are seeing changes in land surfaces in high detail at northern latitudes, indicating thawing permafrost. This releases greenhouse gases into parts of the Arctic, exacerbating the effects of climate change. http://phys.org/news252056019.html Space & Earth Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:33:56 EST news252056019 (PhysOrg.com) -- National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded researchers have successfully tested equipment to map the hidden distribution of groundwater and ice in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region for the first time in Antarctica. http://phys.org/news251713943.html Space & Earth Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:32:34 EST news251713943 (PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine a robot sent out on the prowl on this energy hungry planet looking for methane, the principal component of what we call "natural gas" and probably the most abundant organic compound on earth. http://phys.org/news251022285.html Chemistry Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:25:24 EST news251022285 The effect of sand layer on the ground temperature of permafrost is one of the unsolved scientific problems in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the sand layers were found to play a key role in the protection of the underlying permafrost by the measured data, and this research work was published in Chinese Science Bulletin. http://phys.org/news250141457.html Space & Earth Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:44:27 EST news250141457 Thawing permafrost will have far-reaching ramifications for populated areas, infrastructure and ecosystems. A geographer from the University of Zurich reveals where it is important to confront the issue based on new permafrost maps -- the most precise global maps around. They depict the global distribution of permafrost in high-resolution images and are available on Google Earth. http://phys.org/news249041431.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:10:44 EST news249041431 Two decades after the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change in order to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system", the Arctic shows the first signs of a dangerous climate change. A team of researchers led by CSIC assures so in an article published in the latest issue of the Nature Climate Change magazine. http://phys.org/news247163080.html Space & Earth Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:25:31 EST news247163080 (PhysOrg.com) -- A significant source of greenhouse gases has started leaking into the Earth's atmosphere from an unlikely place. Above the Arctic Circle, land frozen for tens of thousands of years has begun to thaw for the first time. Current estimates indicate that perennially frozen ground, called permafrost, holds more than twice the amount of carbon present in today's atmosphere. As permafrost thaws, a huge amount of this stored carbon could be released as carbon dioxide or methane gas. http://phys.org/news246272240.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:30:04 EST news246272240 A hardy type of bacteria recently discovered in the permafrost of Siberia could help slow down the ageing process, Russian scientists claimed on Tuesday. http://phys.org/news246022352.html Chemistry Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:32:43 EST news246022352 The relationship between permafrost, Arctic vegetation, soil erosion, and changing air temperatures is complicated at best. For instance, rising temperatures melt surface permafrost layers and increase shrub growth. These shrubs can catch drifting snow, insulating the soil during the winter, and accelerate permafrost degradation—facilitating their own proliferation. http://phys.org/news244532123.html Space & Earth Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:00:01 EST news244532123 As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news241882155.html Space & Earth Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:29:38 EST news241882155 From the North Pole to the Arctic Ocean, the frozen soils within this region keep an estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon out of the Earth's atmosphere. This sequestered carbon is more than 250 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the United States in the year 2009. As global temperatures slowly rise, however, so too do concerns regarding the potential impacts upon the carbon cycle when the permafrost thaws and releases the carbon that has been trapped for eons. Like so many of the planet's critical environmental processes, the smallest players—microbes—have the most significant influence over the eventual outcome. http://phys.org/news239806538.html Biology Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:00:01 EST news239806538 (PhysOrg.com) -- Billions of tons of carbon trapped in high-latitude permafrost may be released into the atmosphere by the end of this century as the Earth’s climate changes, further accelerating global warming, a new computer modeling study indicates. http://phys.org/news233289638.html Space & Earth Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:40:57 EST news233289638 (AP) -- The old hunter was troubled by the foreigners encroaching on his Inuit people's frozen lands. http://phys.org/news233120088.html Space & Earth Sun, 21 Aug 2011 04:35:24 EST news233120088 Russia's vast permafrost areas may shrink by a third by the middle of the century due to global warming, endangering infrastructure in the Arctic zone, an emergencies ministry official said Friday. http://phys.org/news231156004.html Space & Earth Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:30:07 EST news231156004