(Video 1 min 2 sec.) Iceland Lesson 4 – Plate Tectonics

Is the perennial permafrost melting?

Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten of the Alfred Wegener Institute points to a 2̊C warming at a depth of 20 meters in Arctic permafrost as a result of Global Warming over the last 20 years.

Source: Stephen Luntz, IFL Science.

But could underground forces also be warming the perennial permafrost?

Researcher, Aleksei Portnov, of Norway’s Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate (CAGE), stated:

The permafrost is thawing from two sides… [T]he interior of the Earth is warm and is warming the permafrost from the bottom up. It is called geothermal heat flux and it is happening all the time, regardless of human influence.

Source: Wikipedia.

Are the geological forces visible in Greenland and Iceland also occurring under the Yamal Peninsula?

Underground temperatures in parts of Siberia have risen by nearly four degrees in the past fifteen years. As the ground there—mostly permafrost—warms, it releases methane. The methane builds up until there’s an explosion, which leaves behind a hole. “The phenomenon is similar to the eruption of a volcano,” Bogoyavlensky said.

. . . . If the permafrost is leaking methane because of rising temperatures, a positive-feedback loop could be taking effect: more methane leads to further warming, which leads to further thawing, and so on.

But the holes in Siberia also point to another, stranger phenomenon. Global warming and geology turn out to be connected in unexpected ways. Consider, for example, earthquakes. Generally, earthquakes occur because of the movements of Earth’s tectonic plates; they tend to take place along plate boundaries. But recently Greenland has been experiencing an unusually large number of quakes. One widely discussed theory attributes this to the shrinking of the Greenland ice sheet. As the ice sheet melts, its weight declines, allowing the land underneath it to rise. The process, which is known as isostatic rebound, may well be responsible for the increase in seismic activity.

Iceland, too, is rising, and for similar reasons. As the country’s glaciers melt, the land is rebounding. A recent study showed that some parts of the country are gaining elevation at the astonishing rate of 1.4 inches a year. “What we’re observing is a climatically induced change in the earth’s surface,” Richard Bennett, one of the authors of the study and a geoscientist at the University of Arizona, told the Web site Live Science last month. In the case of Iceland, that change may lead to an increase in volcanic activity. As the land rises, the pressure on the rock beneath it changes. Lower pressure translates into a lower melting temperature, which could, in turn, translate into more (or at least more destructive) volcanic eruptions. The past five years have been packed with “interesting volcanic activity,” Sigrún Hreinsdóttir, Bennett’s fellow-researcher and a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told the Washington Post. “You can’t make any statistics from those few data points, of course, but you do notice there might be a connection with the uplift,” And there’s a precedent: during the deglaciation that occurred at the end of the last ice age, some twelve thousand years ago, volcanic activity in Iceland is estimated to have increased by as much as a factor of thirty.

Source: Volcanic activity is occurring in nearby Iceland.

Professor Bogoyavlensky stressed: ‘For now, we can speak only about the results of our work in the laboratory, using the images from space.

‘No one knows what is happening in these craters at the moment. We plan a new expedition. Also we want to put not less than four seismic stations in Yamal district, so they can fix small earthquakes, that occur when the crater appears.

‘In two cases locals told us that they felt earth tremors. The nearest seismic station was yet too far to register these tremors.

Source: Seismic research is needed on the Yamal Peninsula.

From information about underground forces as well as global warming, the general consensus is that the permafrost is warming and releasing methane gas.

To review how scientists summed up the process of methane gas forming and interacting pingos to form the Siberian craters, visit the next page.