Factory and farm emissions may be reducing the ability of the Earth’s frozen wastes to reflect harmful solar raysScientists in Alaska will raise the vexed issue of methane and “black carbon pollution as they discuss tipping-point dangers posed by global warming in the Arctic.
A crucial assembly of the Arctic Council,in Anchorage, comes amid evidence that the polar region is warming faster than any other spot on Earth and that sea ice coverage there has shrunk by nearly a third since 1979. Researchers now fear that novel threats to climate stability are approximately to be unleashed in the Arctic. Warming in high latitudes is causing permafrost in Siberia and northern Canada to thaw and release plumes of methane stored there, and they say. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and these releases threaten to trigger secondary rises in global temperatures.
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Source: theguardian.com