After storing carbon dioxide in frozen soil for millennia, the Arctic tundra is being transformed by frequent wildfires into an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, which is already absorbing record levels of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution.
The transition of the Arctic tundra from a carbon sink to a carbon source is one of the dramatic changes in the Arctic that are documented in NOAA’s 2024 Arctic Report Card. Climatic shifts are forcing plants, wildlife and the people that depend on them to rapidly adapt to a warmer, wetter and less certain world . . . .
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