A variety of microbes in permafrost can prevent the planet's air from heating up sharply

Scientists have found that the high diversity of microorganisms inhabiting the permafrost zone can seriously reduce the rate of atmospheric warming near the Earth's surface. This was announced by the Russian Science Foundation (RNF) on its website.

"As permafrost soils melt, microbes begin to release methane and, if there are few bacterial species, at some point there will be a massive release of this greenhouse gas. The high species richness will lead to a smaller — on a scale of several degrees — heating of the planet's air," the message says.

The results of the research, supported by an RNF grant, are published in the journal Chaos, Solitons & Fractals.

According to scientists, from 1750 to 2020, the average temperature at the Earth's surface increased by about 1°C, but in permafrost zones only over the past 70 years, the territories have warmed up by as much as 4°C.

"This is because when the permafrost melts, favorable conditions are created in the soil for the development of microbial communities that process thawing ancient carbon into methane.

This greenhouse gas, in turn, enters the atmosphere and contributes to further warming. At the same time, methane is more dangerous than carbon dioxide from the point of view of warming, since in order for the temperature to rise conditionally by 1 ° C, it needs 17 times less," the RNF explained.

Thus, the foundation noted, microbial activity in the permafrost zone can affect the rate of warming, but it is still not taken into account in existing forecasts.

Researchers from the Center for Scientific Research and Development LLC (Veliky Novgorod), St. Petersburg State University of Industrial Technology and Design (St. Petersburg), the Institute of Problems of Mechanical Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg) with colleagues from the University of California (USA) and Howard University (USA) analyzed how the number of species of soil microorganisms it affects the rate of permafrost melting and the rate of warming.

"We have managed to prove that the moment at which a sharp jump in temperature at the Earth's surface can occur depends on microbial diversity. It is determined by humidity, temperature, nutrient content and soil acidity. And, although we cannot influence microbial diversity, the dependence we have discovered must be taken into account when developing warming forecasts," Elena Savenkova, a project participant and senior researcher at TSNIR LLC, is quoted by the RNF as saying.

According to her, the existing models do not take into account the activity of permafrost microorganisms, but if this factor is included in them, it will allow to adjust the temperatures predicted by 2100 by several degrees.

"In the future, we plan to take into account more differences between different types of microorganisms so that we can quantify the contribution that low and high microbial diversity makes to warming," Savenkova said.