Tundra collapse is not likely to accelerate melting

A complex computer simulation conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the US predicts that the collapse of the tundra due to global warming is unlikely to cause uncontrolled melting.

The nature of the permafrost in the Arctic tundra, which for thousands of years has stored vast amounts of carbon, is in danger of melting and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The UN’s International Panel of Experts on Climate Change considered one of the main concerns in the coming decades the possibility that subsidence of soils in that region could accelerate melting.

Rapid melting caused by landslides has been observed in smaller areas and over shorter timescales, but assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have left doubts about what might happen in the long term.

This was followed by ORNL’s intervention with the Advanced Earth Simulator (ATS), “a highly accurate model based on the hydrology physics of the area, fed by detailed real-world measurements, to help scientists understand the evolution of the planet,” according to Spain’s private news agency Europa Press.

Thus, it was discovered that although the land continues to sink as large glacial deposits melt, the uneven mitigation causes the landscape to dry out and limits the acceleration of the process until the end of the century, indicates the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States.

“Improved drainage leads to a drier environment over a decade and the process is self-limiting,” Scott Painter, who directs the Watershed Systems Modeling Group at ORNL, says in a statement.

For the first time it was possible to “realize the impact of change in microimaging and represent it in climate models,” Painter said, adding that the team has great confidence in the model they used.