By analysing an annual record of satellite images, researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute have now confirmed these findings: thermokarst lakes in Alaska are draining one by one because warmer and wetter conditions cause deeper thaw, effectively weakening frozen ground as a barrier around lakes. In the season 2017/2018, lake drainage was observed on a scale that model outputs didn’t expect until the end of the century.
The Arctic is warming more quickly than almost any other region on Earth as a result of climate change. One of the better known: the continually shrinking summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic. But global warming is also leaving its mark on terrestrial permafrost. For several years, permafrost regions have been thawing more and more intensively in North America, Scandinavia and Siberia – e.g. in the extreme northwest of Alaska. Permafrost is soil that has remained permanently frozen to depths of up to several hundred metres, often since the last glacial period, roughly 20,000 years ago, or in some cases even longer.
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Image via Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research