Abstract

The Arctic. What pops into your head when you hear those words? Polar bears, icebergs, freezing temperatures? These days, you might also think about the declining sea ice, and the possibility of the Northwest Passage opening up for ships. In fact, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, so you might associate the Arctic with “warming” as well as “freezing” these days. Higher temperatures in the Arctic are likely to cause positive feedbacks with the greenhouse gas methane, as some of its main sources (wetlands and permafrost) emit more at warmer temperatures. This talk will focus on the work of a research project to investigate methane emissions in the Arctic (http://arcticmethane.wordpress.com/). The Arctic sources are not well known, so in this project measurements of methane were taken in summer 2012 and 2013 from the wetland areas of Lapland and from a research aircraft that flew around the region. Modelling work is now being undertaken to help understand the measurement data.