Arctic Permafrost Thaw Looks Alien, Accelerates

The trend from frozen tundra soils shifting to thermokarst erosion and thaw ponds, may in the future be exacerbated by increased rainfall and weather events. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lol2.10063/epdf and http://www.inrs.ca/english/actualites/thawing-permafrost-causing-browning-northern-lakes

NASA map of soil degradation https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=89434

Photo, Tundra Fire, Kaminak Lake Area http://www.prairie.illinois.edu/shilts/gallery/shilts-0053.shtml

Horn Lake thermokarst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVKsZhrsAec

Icicle melting by Jeffrey Beach (Beachfront Productions) https://archive.org/details/IcicleMelting

Permafrost warming Svalbard graphic https://twitter.com/Ketil_Isaksen/status/823788018213552128

Further reading
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As the climate warms, the carbon balance of arctic ecosystems will respond in two opposing ways:
Plants will grow faster, leading to a carbon sink, while thawing permafrost will lead to decomposition
and loss of soil carbon.
https://www.amap.no/documents/doc/snow-water-ice-and-permafrost-in-the-arctic-swipa-2017/1610

The results presented here—that large C losses are possible from the permafrost region, whose magnitude is strongly governed by the dynamics of deeper decomposition, and that large losses are unlikely to be compensated by N fertilization accompanying decomposition—underscore the importance of considering permafrost carbon dynamics in ESMs. Permafrost soils may produce a strong, albeit delayed, C response to global change,
and must therefore be included in assessments of long-term C cycle feedbacks to climate change.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3752

Methanotroph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph

Heterotroph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotroph

Alaska Permafrost https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/23/climate/alaska-permafrost-thawing.html