Strange craters burning ice and drunken trees and Climate change
The planet is behaving in mysterious ways, scientists claim
- Temperatures in the Arctic are warming twice as fast as rest of the globe
- Scientists claim this could lead to unusual and unexplained natural events
- This includes drunken trees which form due to firm soil turning into mud
- Methane bubbles could also cause icy regions to ignite when released
- Research this week challenged view that thawing lakes cause warming
Published: 15:06 GMT, 6 August 2014 | Updated: 17:31 GMT, 6 August 2014
Scientists were baffled by the mysterious craters that appeared in northern Russia earlier this month.
Researchers now believe these craters may have been created by a build-up of methane over centuries that then erupting out of the thawing ground.
But strange, unexplained holes are just the beginning of what could be a series of mysterious happenings on the planet – all caused by melting Arctic ice, scientists believe.
Pictured are 'drunken forests' in Fairbanks, Alaska. This phenomenon is caused by the permafrost melting beneath the trees causing solid soil to turn to mud; the result is that they lean to one side.
WHAT ARE DRUNKEN TREES?
Permafrost is leading to ‘drunken trees’ as the firm soil slowly transforms into mud causing the plants that grow in them to lean to one side.
Some trees survive their soil eroding and continue to grow. Others collapse or drown as the subterranean ice melts. As they are staggered across the landscape, people often refer to them as 'drunken trees.'
According to a report by David Biello in Scientific American, temperatures across the Arctic are warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
‘At some point, we might get into a state of permafrost that is not comparable to what we know for 100 years or so, some new processes that never happened before,’ geologist Guido Grosse of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research told Mr Biello.
A similar process is taking place in the melting regions of the Arctic where lakes, known as thermokarsts, which are lakes that break down plant material into methane.
This methane can then escape out of the lake or the ground, and once lit, could set ice on fire.
An ecologist ignites a large methane bubble that was trapped by the autumn freeze. One of the largest concerns about thawing permafrost is the sudden release of methane from the Arctic.
Permafrost is also leading to ‘drunken trees’ as the firm soil slowly transforms into mud causing the plants that grow in them to lean to one side.
Some trees survive their soil eroding and continue to grow. Others collapse or drown as the subterranean ice melts.
Nasa claims that arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon - an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 billion tonnes of it.
That's about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth's soils. In comparison, about 350 billion tonnes of carbon have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities.
Scientists were baffled by the mysterious craters that appeared in northern Russia earlier this month. Researchers now believe they were created by a build-up of methane over centuries, Russian expedition looks into mysterious hole in Siberia.
Most of the Arctic’s sequestered carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 3 meters of the surface.
'Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures - as much as 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius in just the past 30 years,' said Nasa's Charles Miller.
'As heat from Earth's surface penetrates into permafrost, it threatens to mobilise these organic carbon reservoirs and release them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, upsetting the Arctic's carbon balance and greatly exacerbating global warming.'
World problems are a clear sign of the nearness of Chirst's return to this Earth to Establish God's Kingdom as Promised. This is what we read in Luke 21:25-28
"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."
In this article we note that even if man can reduce carbon emmissions, the earth is going to do evern more damage as carbon is released from melting and ocean warming.
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