Not – So – Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming

“Drunken” trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes

“When the air temperature rises two to three degrees, the Arctic tundra would switch from a carbon sink to a carbon source,” says soil scientist Chien-Lu Ping of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “The greater the carbon stores, the greater the impact it causes,” including even faster warming in the already changing Arctic.