Melting permafrost in the Arctic is unlocking diseases and warping the landscape — vox.com

You can find evidence of a changing climate everywhere on Earth. But nowhere are the changes more dramatic than in the Arctic. Our world’s northern polar region is warming twice as fast as the global average. And the consequences are easy to spot. On average, Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking every summer. The Greenland ice sheet is becoming unstable. But perhaps most disturbing are the changes occurring underground in the permafrost. Permafrost is a layer of frozen soil that covers 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere. It acts like a giant freezer, keeping microbes, carbon, and soil locked in place.

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