How Ancient Arctic Carbon Threatens Everyone on the Planet | Sue Natali | TED

So whenever I tell people I’m an Arctic scientist,

the first thing that they always ask me is: How cold is it up there?

(Laughter)

And yeah, the Arctic can get pretty cold.

Trust me when I tell you

that working outside at -40 degrees is really, really challenging.

But in the summer of 2019,

it was anything but cold.

So that summer I was working with my research team

in Alaska’s Yukon Kuskokwim Delta

on the traditional lands of the Yup’ik and Cup’ik people.

And we were up there hauling hundreds of pounds of equipment

across the tundra in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave.

It was 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

There was no breeze,

nowhere to go for a shade

and seemingly endless miles of tundra as far as my eyes could see.

To make matters worse,

the land had drastically changed

since we had been here just one year before.

The ground was sinking and it was cracking.

In places, it was literally collapsing beneath my feet.

I’ve been working in the Arctic for more than a decade,

and I had never seen changes happening this rapidly ever before.

The changes we saw were remarkable,

and they were also really concerning.

But we were there to measure changes that we couldn’t see.

We were there to fill a major gap in our understanding

of how the changing Arctic is impacting the Earth’s climate.

So we were installing what’s called an “eddy covariance tower,”

which is a series of instruments

that measures the exchange of greenhouse gases,

like carbon dioxide and methane,

between the land and the atmosphere.

It’s essentially like measuring the Earth’s breath.

And so the reason the land around us was collapsing

is because the once permanently frozen ground called permafrost

was starting to thaw.

And once it thaws,

that collapsing ground can drastically alter

the vast expanse of the Arctic’s tundra and boreal forest,

and it can also threaten the homes and lifeways

of Arctic residents.

Just imagine if the ground beneath your home

suddenly started to sink.

That's what's happening across the Arctic.

But thawing permafrost also threatens everyone on the planet

because it stores a massive amount of ancient frozen carbon.

And when that carbon thaws,

it can be released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases,

leading to more warming and more thaw.

So let me place the magnitude of this problem in perspective for you.

By the end of this century,

greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost

may be on par with some of the world’s leading greenhouse-gas-emitting nations,

perhaps as large as or larger than emissions from the United States,

the second-largest greenhouse-gas-emitting country in the world.

And you know, I want to point out, this is not a new phenomena.

Arctic residents and scientists

have been observing permafrost thaw now for decades.

But the scale of the research hasn’t been sufficient

to meet this enormous challenge.

Because no one country is directly responsible for permafrost thaw,

no single nation has taken responsibility for fully monitoring

and tracking its impact across the Arctic.

And this is not a case where ignorance is bliss,

because what doesn't get measured doesn't get accounted for.

Because we can’t put a precise number on permafrost emissions,

policymakers are essentially excluding them,

setting global emissions targets that are wholly insufficient

to protect us from catastrophic climate change.

Ignoring permafrost

is essentially like leaving a major greenhouse-gas-emitting country,

like the United States,

out of global climate negotiations,

which is not a good idea.

What we need to know is where permafrost is thawing across the Arctic

and how fast,

what that means in terms of greenhouse gas emissions

and how that will impact our climate in 10, 50 or 100 years from now.

Answering these questions requires a massive and integrated effort

at a scale that matches the enormity of this problem.

Thankfully, we have a plan.

Through an ambitious new initiative called Permafrost Pathways,

we’ve formed a coalition of Arctic residents and scientists,

Indigenous knowledge-holders

and Arctic and climate policy influencers

to tackle this problem with the urgency it deserves.

Recognizing that we cannot continue on our current climate trajectory,

we’ve brought this team together to think big

and to act boldly

and to work across boundaries

to take us on a new pathway forward.

So to get started,

the first thing that we need to do

is to actually measure greenhouse gas emissions

across the entire Arctic.

Currently there are only a handful of monitoring towers across the Arctic

that run year round

and that measure both important greenhouse gases,

carbon dioxide and methane.

So we’re working with a team of international scientific experts

to strategically identify and fill these monitoring gaps

by installing new equipment across the Arctic

in remote locations where monitoring currently doesn’t exist.

We believe that by installing just 10 new monitoring sites,

we can drastically improve our estimates of permafrost emissions,

which will remove a major barrier

to their incorporation into the global climate policy.

And we’re coupling this on-the-ground monitoring

with high-resolution satellite observations

and advanced computer modeling

so that we can track the changing Arctic in near real-time

and accurately project permafrost emissions into the future.

But state-of-the-art science just isn’t enough.

We need to make sure that permafrost emissions are counted

when setting global emissions targets,

because each year that we fail to account for permafrost is another year

that we become unwittingly locked-in to more severe climate warming.

So we’re working with leading policy experts

to bring this new knowledge

to the table with the decision-makers at the highest level

to make sure that global climate policy is accounting for permafrost

and aiming for the right targets.

But the truth is,

even with the most ambitious climate action,

some permafrost is going to thaw --

that’s already happening.

Right now across the Arctic,

people are having to make extremely difficult decisions

about where and how to live

in order to protect themselves and their families

from the hazards of climate change.

So we’re working with our team members

and our partners who live on permafrost

to bring these monitoring and modeling tools

to assess the current and future impacts of permafrost thaw on Arctic communities,

and to co-create adaptation plans

that protect and respect the health,

well-being

and human rights of Arctic residents.

These are the gaps we plan to fill.

Painting a picture of the Arctic

that we have never been able to see before,

and recognizing that ultimately,

the climate crisis is a human rights crisis,

and it’s one that’s already underway.

But through these actions that we take now,

we can greatly reduce future harm

and take us on a more just and equitable journey.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)