Most of the near-surface permafrost may disappear by 2100. This is predicted by an international group of scientists who compared the current climate trends with the climate of the planet 3 million years ago.
The results of the study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
The amount of near-surface permafrost may decrease by 93% compared to the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900. This corresponds with the most extreme warming scenario indicated in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By 2100, near-surface permafrost in the upper layers of the soil can exist only in the East Siberian highlands, the Canadian Arctic archipelago and in the northernmost part of Greenland. Similar conditions were in the warm period of the middle Pliocene.
According to scientists, the loss of such a large amount of near-surface permafrost over the next 77 years will have widespread consequences for people's livelihoods and infrastructure, for the global carbon cycle, as well as for surface and underground hydrology, lenta.ru reports.
Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished
