New NASA finds refute old research: Alaska not releasing unusually high rates of methane

 
In the last few decades, temperature increases in Alaska have been linked with unsually high rates of methane being released into the atmosphere. But recently, a new NASA analysis of airborne data finds the earlier model to be incorrect, concluding the methane levels are not being inordinarily impacted by the methane release, stating that the changes in the Arctic are to recent to play a large role in the global methane budget.

Methane, as you may recall, is the third most common greenhouse gas in the atmosphere following water vapor and carbon dioxide; although it represents a much smaller fraction than either of these two gases, it is 33 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat within the atmosphere.
The most recent analysis reviews methane measurements made by NASA’s Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) during its first season in operation, from May through September in 2012 and discovered that although Alaska represents one percent of Earth’s total land area, it only produces one percent of the total methane emissions. 

However, Charles Miller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, principle investigator for CARVE, states that results from a single year “don’t preclude accelerated changes in the future.” This is because a vast amount of carbon is stored in undecayed organic matter locked in the permafrost. As climate changes continue to bring us longer and warmer summers, more of the permafrost will thaw, exposing vaster amounts of matter to decomposition. As decomposition sets in, additional methane and carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere; it’s predicted that more than twice as much carbon dioxide is locked away in the frozen north than currently exists in the atmosphere, were this to melt, than the impact on global temperatures would be dire.
 
Source: NASA