Melting Arctic Permafrost May Accelerate Global Warming. ‘Global warming may be set to accelerate as rising temperatures in the
Arctic melt the permafrost causing it to release greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere, a United Nations scientist warned today. An estimated 14
per cent of the world’s carbon is stored in Arctic lands.

Svein Tveitdal, director of a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
center in Norway that monitors the region, reported that rising Arctic
temperatures are melting the solid structure of frozen soil known as
permafrost and releasing heat trapping greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.

“Permafrost has acted as a carbon sink, locking away carbon and other
greenhouse gases like methane, for thousands of years,” Tveitdal told a
meeting of the United Nation’s Governing Council in Nairobi.’ Environmental News Service