ABISKO, Oct 25 Sheltered by snow-spattered mountains, the Stordalen mire is a flat, marshy plateau, pockmarked with muddy puddles. A whiff of rotten eggs wafts through the fresh air. Here in the Arctic in Sweden’s far north, about 10 kilometres (six miles) east of the tiny town of.
How climate change is changing northern Sweden and the people who live there thelocal.se - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thelocal.se Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Between carbon dioxide and methane, permafrost contains some 1,700 billion tons of organic carbon, almost twice the amount of carbon already present in the atmosphere.
Permafrost - defined as soil that stays frozen year-round for at least two consecutive years - lies under about a quarter of land in the Northern Hemisphere.. Read more at straitstimes.com.
There is some debate as to whether this thawing of permafrost in peatland ecosystems is “a long freight train moving slowly as it unloads its greenhouse gases" or a carbon bomb about to blow as the train careens off the tracks.