Scientists on Tuesday called for action to defuse a time bomb of Arctic greenhouse gas as negotiators at UN talks grappled over a climate rescue pact.
About 1,500 billion tonnes of heat-trapping carbon gas are estimated to be locked in permafrost, which is thawing as the climate warms, according to new research.
Releasing the carbon will create a vicious cycle in Earth's global-warming problem, said Susan Natali of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.
The estimated amount of carbon in permafrost -- perennially frozen ground covering about a quarter of exposed land in the northern hemisphere -- represents about twice the volume currently in the atmosphere, she said.
"Emissions from permafrost could lead to out-of-control global warming", according to a presentation on the sidelines of 11-day climate talks in Bonn.
Country negotiators in the former West German capital are seeking to streamline a draft global climate pact for adoption at a UN conference in Paris in December.
AFP / Clement Sabourin
French biologist and leading scientist at Takuvik Joint International Laboratory sets up equipment to detect temperature changes in the tundra near Kuujjuarapik, Quebec, Canada on December 5, 2014
But they disagree on how, and delegates say the meeting that opened last Monday has been taken up by technical squabbling.
There are just two days of talks left, and just over six months before the deadline for signing the final agreement which will seek to meet the UN goal of limiting overall global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
"We are advancing but not at the speed we would have liked," Gabriel Quijandria, the deputy environment minister of Peru, which hosted last year's UN climate conference, told AFP in Bonn.
No comments:
Post a Comment