Scientists shocked by Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted
Ice blocks frozen solid for thousands of years destabilized
‘The climate is now warmer than at any time in last 5,000 years’
Reuters
Tue 18 Jun 2019 12.02 EDT
Last modified on Tue 18 Jun 2019 12.58 EDT
A cemetery sitting on melting permafrost tundra at the village of Quinhagak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska.The scientists’ findings offer a further sign of a growing climate emergency.
Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.
A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.