TOMSK, Apr 23 – RIA Tomsk. Climatologists of Tomsk State University (TSU) as a part of the international scientific group conducted the first comprehensive study of the lakes of the Arctic zone of Western Siberia and concluded that the most intensive emission of methane and carbon dioxide occurs in spring and autumn, the press service of the university reported on Tuesday.
According to the press service, scientists from TSU, Umeå University (Sweden) and Midi-Pyrenees Observatories (France) for the first time comprehensively studied the emission of greenhouse gases – methane and carbon dioxide – by lakes in the Arctic and Subarctic of Western Siberia. They explored 76 lakes during the entire period of open water - in spring, summer and autumn. Earlier were studied samples taken from only a few reservoirs within one season.
"Comprehensive studies ... allowed to obtain a large array of unique data on the contribution of thermokarst lakes in Western Siberia to the greenhouse effect. This will allow to better understand the processes of environmental transformation ... and build much more accurate predictions about what will happen with permafrost and what climate changes are waiting for humanity in the future", – is said in the statement.
In particular, according to the employee of the TSU BioGeoClim laboratory Artyom Lim, the latitude and seasonality have the greatest value on the amount of emissions, for example, emissions increase from south to north and reach their maximum in the zone of continuous permafrost, where they are 2-5 times larger than in the south."The maximum emission of greenhouse gases occurs in spring, when lakes open up after winter and release reserves accumulated during the winter into the atmosphere, and in the fall during the period of prolonged rains, when the area of watering increases significantly", – is said in the report.
In Western Siberia, there is the world's largest frozen peat bog, which contains huge reserves of organic carbon. In the process of permafrost melting, the release of carbon and its partial migration to the arctic and subarctic lakes occurs. The intensity of the process is influenced by the depth of the reservoir, the temperature of the water and air, atmospheric pressure, air flow, adds the press service.