A Huge Unknown Source of Methane Gas Discovered

A woodland region in Alaska is emitting far more greenhouse gases than it is accumulating. The cause can be found in pockets of active soil released by thawing permafrost, reports The Polar Journal.

The methane escapes from upland Arctic Yedoma permafrost soils exceed those in regions further north by far - emissions that have only recently been discovered by researchers and are not yet taken into account in current climate models.

It was a research team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks that discovered that upland Yedoma permafrost landscapes, which were previously considered carbon sinks, release huge amounts of methane - much more then wetlands further north.

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