A Trip to Alaska in Search of the Future of Climate Change

Last month, scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and several other U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories traveled to two small Alaskan towns - tiny dots amid the vastness of the tundra, and perfect places to observe Earth at a crossroads. Near Council, on the Seward Peninsula, the permafrost is already thinning due to climate change. Hundreds of miles north near Barrow, the northernmost town in the U.S., the permafrost is frozen thick. For now. What happens here in the years ahead could have a far wider impact than an altered Arctic landscape and a different way of life for the people who call it home. Trapped within the permafrost are billions of tons of carbon deposited by plants over the millennia. The carbon might stay put.