Three things you should know about permafrost

Maybe, like me, you’ve been aware that this layer of frozen soil is thawing, that it’s important in the global puzzle of climate change … and that’s about the extent of it.

The great news for both of us is that my colleague James Temple just published two in-depth stories about permafrost. His reporting took him to the boreal forests of Alaska, where he helicoptered into the wilderness to learn more about how this material could affect our climate both now and in the future.

I’d recommend you give both of James’s stories a read. There’s this feature about efforts to tackle the intensifying fires that are threatening permafrost, as well as this look at how researchers are trying to understand the complicated tangle of potential climate effects. Here are three things I took away.

Permafrost is a massive blind spot for climate change

Permafrost is the frozen layer of soil that’s under about 15% of land around the Northern …