Climate security

Permafrost: hiding a climate time bomb?

On the front line of climate change in the Canadian Arctic, scientists hunt for clues to a potentially catastrophic global warming trend: melting permafrost.

On the rolling landscape of shrubs and moss around Hudson Bay, they probe the once impenetrable ground now thawing in places due to global warming.

Teams are measuring the soil's carbon content, temperature, pace of melt and the resulting release of once-trapped greenhouse gases.

"There is twice as much carbon in permafrost than in the atmosphere," said Florent Domine, a researcher with France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).