Melting permafrost

Since we lived 6 years in Alaska, stories of global warming interest us.
They say warming is most evident closer to the poles.

So a story like this one today in Yahoo News caught our eye:

In what has now become an annual occurrence, the North Pole's ice has melted, turning the Earth's most northern point into a lake. Call it Lake North Pole. To be clear, the water surrounding the pole is not seawater seeping up from the ocean but melted icewater resting on top of a thinning layer of ice below the surface. "It’s a shallow lake. It’s a cold lake. But it is, actually, a lake," 

This picture (from that article) shows more than a 1,000 words could tell:

Yes, that's melted ice water on the North Pole!

We've also heard much about the melting permafrost and how that could release lots and lots of carbon dioxide/methane into the atmosphere.
We never knew how that could be till we took our driving trip up to the Arctic Circle this June 21st, the longest day of the year.

We sure looked happy and relaxed, showing off our local newspaper.

But we actually got to see, touch, and feel the permafrost.
Some places it is so close to the surface that we could dig right down to a sheet of frozen ground with a stick we found by the side of the road!

There was the permafrost: 9 inches into the ground. So cold that it would freeze you finger if you kept them there. And too hard to pick through with a stick.

The story goes: As the air temp gets warmer, the ice'll melt. And then the gasses trapped under it will percolate up to the atmosphere.

You might ask, "If it's 85 degrees in the summer, why isn't it already melted?"
Well, the - 40 to -70 winter weather has made it such hard ice, that summer temps have not made it melt till now, when summer is hotter and lasting more than years ago.

Anyway, you can also get an idea of just how close to the surface it is by seeing the vegetation above ground.
Where the permafrost is close to the surface, only lichen and grasses grow.
Where it is a few feet deeper, roots form Black Spruce can go deep enough to let those trees grow.
So as you drive in Alaska, you can see which fields have deep and which have shallow permafrost. Cool!

Take a look at this pic.
Where we were digging, there are no trees.
Further in the background you see spruce. That's where the permafrost is deeper.

But look a little closer at the taller vegetation between the foreground grasses/flowers, and the spruce pines in the background.

See that row of different vegetation?
That is where the exploratory trucks that were planning for theAlaska Pipeline drove while figuring it's course in the early 1970's.

Just the temperature form those tires driving over it was enough to melt the permafrost, let blown seeds take a hold there....
and lead to  stripes of taller vegetation that mark the route, 40 years after the permafrost was disturbed!

Fragile stuff it is!

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