It's a Science Blog! Part 2: Methane, Mooing, and Mires

On the last edition of It’s a Science Blog! I introduced the Arctic, permafrost, and carbon (I know it has been a while. I haven’t been procrastinating, I promise. But for a refresher just keep scrolling!). In this edition I will venture a little deeper into greenhouse gases and what they have to do with my project here in Sweden. Exciting stuff.

To start, I want to look back at a term I threw out in the first blog, greenhouse gases (GHG). This word gets used a lot when talking about climate change and I want to take a second to break it down a little bit. Greenhouse gases are compounds that, when present in the atmosphere, act to trap heat and warm up the earth. You are probably most familiar with the GHG, carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is produced from fossil fuel combustion (burning coal, oil, natural gas), but can come from natural sources. For example, we release CO₂ when we breath. But CO₂ is not the only greenhouse gas. Other common GHG include water vapor, nitrous oxide (also produced by your car!), and methane (CH₄).

Together, these gases let some types of light waves, known as UV light, through the earth’s atmosphere, while trapping another type, called infrared radiation (IR radiation), sending it back to the earth, heating the atmosphere. A similar process happens in greenhouses we have for plants, thus the name!

 

Greenhouse gases trap IR radiation (heat) coming from the earth and send it back towards the surface

My research centers around methane (I also look at CO₂ as well, but I won't go into detail about that here), which is close to 20 times more effective at trapping heat than CO₂. You might be thinking, hey methane… cows produce that when they burp, right? Yep, but hold on, I’ll get to that. First, some background info.  

Methane is a product of metabolism by a group of small organisms called methanogens. In other words, really tiny critters eat carbon and produce methane as waste. But for this to happen, methanogens have to be in an environment with no oxygen. Where do these environments exist?... Well, a lot of places actually.

For example, in nature, environments with little to no oxygen ("anoxic" environments) can be created when the ground becomes saturated with water which cuts off the soil from the oxygen in the atmosphere. So you can imagine how the bottom of a lake is a very anoxic. But you don’t even need an entire lake to have these conditions. In fact, wetlands and rice paddies are some of the leading sources of methane.

Man-made landfills also create an anoxic environment perfect for methanogens and methane production. The food we throw away into landfills builds up so much that we have to compress the trash in the landfill, leaving the bottom of the landfill with no oxygen. Then our leftover food becomes the main meal for methanogens.  

Methane is produced both by natural processes and human activity- for example, landfills. 

And where do cows fit in all of this? Well, it turns out, a cow’s stomach doesn’t have a whole lot of oxygen either. Methanogens are able to live inside the cow's stomach, breaking down food and turning it into methane just as they do in anoxic landfills and wetlands. The methane is then released into the atmosphere when cows burp.

Okay, enough about cows. Let’s get to the question you have probably been asking for a while… what am I doing? Yes, what am I doing- in life, in Sweden, in general. Good questions. I don’t actually spend all my time hiking in the mountains, as it may appear. Till just recently, I have spent most of my days outside mucking through a mire and loosing my boots to mats of quicksand-like mosses.

 A mire is a type of wetland. In the mire I study, there are both patches of low lying, soggy or water covered ground (where the boot gobbling, quicksand mosses live) and higher patches of dry ground. Most generally, these high patches, known as palsas, contain permafrost (don’t know what permafrost is? Check out my previous science blog!), while the low, wet patches are mainly permafrost free. My project focuses on small ponds in these low, permafrost-free regions of the mire. I want to know if methane is being produced and emitted from these ponds, and, if so, how much methane is being emitted and how it compares to the emissions from nearby lakes and streams.  But… I think that’s enough for today. More methane-pond-mire breakdown in the next It’s a Science Blog! For now, enjoy these pictures of Stordalen mire, my workplace:

Oh, and for those of you wondering why methane hydrates, natural gas, termites, giant Siberian sink holes, methane on Mars and other methane related topics didn’t make it into this blog, I am not ignoring them. There just isn’t enough room in one blog to fit every cool topic concerning methane. But if you want to talk about these topics just email me! I’m always down for a methane chat.

-Kenzie 

This site is not an official Fulbright Program site. The views expressed in this site are entirely those of its author and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State or any of its partner organizations.

A little bit of Norway, a lot of fall

Just because this was the coolest rainbow ever....

Hej everyone,

I believe I promised some (now long overdue) pictures of Norway. While I could go on and on about the short weekend trip I took with my lovely roommates, these pictures will do a lot better job. I will say, however, that even in dark, cold, windy, and rainy weather, Norway is a truly unique and amazing place to be. In three days, we were only able to scratch the surface of the multitude of natural features and quaint towns that Norway has to offer. Just enough time to add about 100 things to my travel wish list. Needless to say, I will find my way back before my time here is up.

Stormy and spectacular

 

A small fishing village located in the Lofoten Islands

Blue skies and sunshine (that, of course, came on our way back home)

And in other news, while everyone back home has been celebrating the start of the autumn colors (and Dunk’s Pumpkin coffee), here in Abisko, we are appreciating the end of it. I used to think that the fall colors in the Rockies came and went too fast, but up here, fall comes and goes in the blink of an eye. The lush green valleys and hillsides that first greeted me six weeks ago are long gone. In their place stand only the skeletons of birches with small hints of the leaves that used to dominate the landscape. And it all happened so fast. At first, the green leaves of the birch trees were just barely touched with yellow tips, but like a titration with just one drop too much, the apparent slow addition of splashes of yellow hit a tipping point, and in what seemed like only a night, the entire landscape turned yellow and faded to orange. 

The green of summer 

The orange of autumn

And just as the green had to give way to yellow and orange, the golden leaves are now on their way out too. Luckily, I was able to see the end of fall from a pretty good view point…  

:)

While autumn, to me, will always mean aspen trees, football games, and freshly baked pumpkin bread- birch trees, kanelbullar (yummy, yummy Swedish cinnamon rolls), and berry picking aren’t bad substitutes. Now I am just waiting for the slowing approaching snow line to make its way down from the mountain tops... 

Next up, it's a science blog (part 2!).

Cheers,

Kenzie

It’s a Science Blog! Part One: The Arctic, permafrost, and carbon

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word, Arctic? My guesses are… cold, snow, polar bears, and Santa Claus. Was I far off? Probably not, because these are the things that used to come to my own mind when I pictured the top of the world. But after a couple summers spent above the Arctic circle in Siberia and now in Sweden, the first words I think of are: mosquitoes, sun, hot, water, life, and beautiful.  Pretty different, huh? My experiences have led me to split the term “Arctic” into these two separate trains of thought- the north pole and polar bears in one category and the mosquitoes and sun into another category some refer to as the sub-arctic.

The technical cut-off for the Arctic Circle is 66° 32" N (if these numbers don’t make any sense, just check out the map below). You can think of this line as the boundary where the sun is up all summer and completely below the horizon for part of the winter. I have experienced the former and await the latter.... Cherskiy, Russia, my previous Arctic hub, and my new home in Abisko, Sweden lie just above this line. Both are in the Arctic, but, just not quite at the North Pole.

A map outlining the boundaries of the Arctic Circle. Abisko is at the top of the light peach region, while Cherskiy sits in the yellow region nearest to Alaska.
Image from osu.edu

Abisko and Cherskiy undergo a “growing” season during the summer, unlike the North Pole part of the Arctic. During this time there are green trees, abundant plants, flowers, birds, lemmings, and even some large mammals like moose, bears, and reindeer. Though snowy patches may be scattered throughout the mountainsides, the landscape is mainly snow and ice free. At the surface that is.  

It's a bird. In some grass. In Siberia.
Photo Cred: John Schade

Abisko in mid August.

Both areas experience effects of the freezing cold winters, all year long. The remnants of winter can be found just below your feet in the form of permafrost- ground that is frozen all year round. Permafrost is prominent throughout the Arctic Circle in both large, continuous formations, as well as smaller scattered patches. Cherskiy resides on top of a continuous zone of permafrost (everywhere you walk there is permafrost beneath), while Abisko sits on top of a discontinuous zone (think- some permafrost surrounded by ground that isn’t completely frozen all year long).

A map showing the distribution of permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere. The dark purple represents zones of continuous permafrost while the lighter purple colors represent zones of discontinuous and sporadic permafrost.
Image from ipa,arcticportal.org

So… why all this talk about frozen ground? It’s just dirt, right? Wrong! Within the frozen Arctic soils are large quantities of really old plants that we call carbon and organic matter. And this old organic matter has been frozen in the permafrost for thousands of years. Till now. Increasing global temperatures are slowly thawing out the frozen ground, providing a food source to tiny organisms that eventually release the chewed on organic matter into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. Just like the gases that are produced from the fossil fuels burned in your car, these gases act to trap heat in the atmosphere and increase global temperatures. In short, already warming temperatures thaw permafrost, which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which further increases global temperatures that thaw yet more permafrost and release more greenhouse gases- a cycle known as a positive feedback loop.  However, right now, the magnitude and exact details of the effects of this feedback loop on the world’s climate aren’t well known. But a lot of people are trying to figure that out, one small piece of the puzzle at a time. I am also trying to place a piece of the puzzle, but more on that later.

A simple diagram showing the positive feedback loop of warming temperatures and permafrost thaw.

On the next edition of “It’s a Science Blog!” look forward to methane, mooing, and mires. If you have had too much science for one blog (though I find this a hard feat to manage), you can rest easy knowing that I have a trip to Norway coming up that will most likely occupy some blog time with pretty lakes, old viking relics, and fjords. Fewf.