Trapped within the Arctic permafrost there’s a whole lot of carbon – potentially up to four times more carbon than the combined amount of CO2 modern humans have emitted. It’s one of the reasons scientists are so worried about the Arctic melting – as the ice goes, this carbon will be released. But now a new study has shown that a melting Arctic may actually unleash far more carbon than even our worst-case models have predicted. This is because hungry microbes, hiding in the Arctic soil, seem to be chewing their way through tiny molecular iron manacles that would otherwise be shackling carbon to the soil – meaning we’ve underestimated the risk of it being released into the atmosphere. These iron-reducing bacteria are becoming activated by rising temperatures, and they may be making the whole carbon sink a lot more unstable. To view the full article visit Science.
