Duluth-Superior: the Riviera of the north?

We here in Minnesota see the political races heating up. Heck, that's nothing. Time to book that December tropical cruise around Lake Superior....

Scientists See New Global Warming Threat

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Wednesday, September 6, 2006

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- New research is raising concerns that global warming may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb trapped in once-frozen permafrost.

As the Earth warms, greenhouse gases once stuck in the long-frozen soil are bubbling into the atmosphere in much larger amounts than previously anticipated, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.

Methane trapped in a special type of permafrost is bubbling up at a rate five times faster than originally measured, the journal said.

Scientists are fretting about a global warming vicious cycle that had not been part of their already gloomy climate forecasts: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that had been continuously frozen for thousands of years.

Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost, and so on.

"The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle," said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "That's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off."

The rest is here. How global warming will affect Minnesota can be found at these sites:

• "Global Warming and its Impact on Minnesota" from the Minnesota Polution Control Agency (MPCA)
• "Forest changes linked to global warming" from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR)
  
• "The Crossroads of Climate Change" from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
• "Minnesota's Climate Change" from KARE-11 TV
• "Global Warming and Climate Change in Minnesota" from the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance
• "Climate Change and Minnesota" (PDF format) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• "Climate Change in Minnesota" from the Union of Concerned Scientists
• "Global Warming and Minnesota" (PDF format) from the National Wildlife Federation
• "Hunters and anglers say they see global warming in Minnesota" from MPR