Fifty years ago, this Alaskan site was a frozen spruce forest. Today, it is a 10-foot-deep lake.<\/p>\n
Today, things are rather different: the forest is gone<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The ground collapsed into a thermokarst lake that is now boiling with methane bubbles.<\/p>\n NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) confirms this lake formed in just 50 years due to abrupt thaw<\/strong>.<\/p>\n What concerns them most is not the water itself; it’s the gas escaping from below.<\/p>\n Researchers first noticed unusual changes in interior Alaska<\/strong> through older aerial photographs and satellite comparisons.<\/p>\n Large stretches of land no longer matched earlier surveys.<\/p>\n Ground that once remained frozen year-round had started sinking unevenly<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Pools of water formed first. Then entire sections widened into lakes.<\/p>\n Scientists studying the area realized thawing permafrost was reshaping the terrain from below<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Permafrost here contains 50% to 80% ice. As it melts, the soil loses volume and sinks into a basin.<\/p>\n That process created expanding basins that trapped rainwater and melted snow<\/strong>. The lakes continued growing after formation.<\/p>\n Researchers also noticed another pattern.<\/p>\n Some newly formed lakes released unusually large amounts of gas bubbles<\/strong> through the surface.<\/p>\n Ebullition (bubbling) is most violent at the ‘thaw bulb’ edges where the lake expands into new frozen soil.<\/p>\n Scientists suspected the collapsing ground was exposing something ancient beneath the surface<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Researchers began drilling into sediments beneath several lakes in Alaska.<\/a><\/p>\n The material below the water looked very different from ordinary lake mud<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Most of it came from frozen soil that only recently thawed out. Which mattered, because frozen ground stores vast amounts of organic material.<\/p>\n Roots, mosses, dead plants, and buried carbon<\/strong> can remain trapped for thousands of years.<\/p>\n Once thawed, microscopic organisms begin a feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n Microbes consume 40,000-year-old Pleistocene carbon, releasing methane\u2014a gas 80 times more potent than CO2<\/strong> over 20 years.<\/p>\n The microbes break down the carbon and release gases during decomposition.<\/p>\n Then another clue appeared: the youngest lakes often produced the strongest methane emissions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Older lakes behaved differently.<\/p>\n Scientists think many older systems had already exhausted much of their easily decomposed organic matter<\/strong> centuries earlier.<\/p>\n Younger lakes still contained fresh thawing sediments rich in carbon.<\/p>\n That helps explain why bubbling intensified near shorelines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Researchers also found evidence that thawing ground may create new underground pathways.<\/p>\n Those that allow trapped gases to rise<\/strong> more easily. Which could reshape the Alaskan landscape entirely.<\/a><\/p>\n NASA<\/a> has detailed what is happening in Alaska.<\/p>\n Sentinel-2 satellites show these lakes are expanding across the Arctic at unprecedented rates<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A report by Copernicus<\/a> says Sentinel-2 satellites show these lakes are expanding across the Arctic at unprecedented rates.<\/p>\n The focal point of this climate shift is Big Trail Lake, a ‘young’ thermokarst feature in Goldstream Valley, Alaska.<\/p>\n Scientists say it barely existed in its current form<\/strong> around 50 years ago.<\/p>\n Today, it has become Alaska\u2019s exemplar of a rapidly expanding thermokarst lake.<\/p>\n The bubbles are pure methane.<\/strong><\/p>\n This occurs because newly thawed microbes are ‘eating’ yedoma\u2014organic-rich soil frozen since the Ice Age.<\/p>\n For thousands of years, frozen ground hid ancient carbon<\/a>. Once thawed, microbes began decomposing that material<\/strong> and releasing methane into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n Researchers say younger lakes like Big Trail can become especially powerful methane hotspots.<\/p>\n Because freshly thawed sediments still contain enormous amounts of untouched organic matter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That process can feed itself.<\/p>\n Water absorbs heat far more efficiently than frozen soil.<\/p>\n This creates a feedback loop. Water retains heat, deepening the ‘talik’ (unfrozen ground) and unlocking deeper carbon reserves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And expose even more ancient carbon to decomposition. <\/p>\n Scientists now believe similar lakes could become increasingly important methane sources<\/strong> across the Arctic during this century.<\/p>\n Big Trail Lake shows how quickly frozen landscapes can transform.<\/p>\n A forested stretch became open water within decades.<\/a><\/p>\n Big Trail Lake is now a chimney, venting greenhouse gases trapped for 40 millennia<\/strong> into our modern atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fifty years ago, this Alaskan site was a frozen spruce forest. Today, it is a 10-foot-deep lake. Today, things are rather different: the forest is gone. The ground collapsed into a thermokarst lake that is now boiling with methane bubbles. NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) confirms this lake formed in just 50 years due to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":21618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"NASA,methane bubbles","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"NASA has stated that a newly formed lake in Alaska that did not exist a few decades ago has been releasing methane bubbles into the atmosphere around it.","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Big Trail Lake: How the Arctic\u2019s newest methane fountain emerged<\/h2>\n
Exhausted vs. explosive: How the chemistry of young Arctic lakes remains hidden<\/h2>\n
40,000 years in the making: The ‘instant’ lake venting ancient methane<\/h2>\n
The permafrost time bomb: Alaska\u2019s new 40,000-year-old greenhouse gas factory<\/h3>\n