Materials after ice thaw: methane, microbes, mud

As sea ice melts, radar observations have shown, bubbles of methane rising from the depths of the Arctic Ocean become more common. The states of methane as a substance itself – dissolved, bubbly, or solid as methane hydrate – interact with and respond to the behaviour of the ice it resides near. Melting ice and the release of methane in its various forms portend potential climate disasters, as a runaway, nonlinear effect unable to be adequately captured in climate models or carbon budgets. Material traces remain in place, emerge, and surge after ice melts, as permafrost thaws, and as a range of microbes awaken, including pathogenic bacterial released in the local environment and potentially into human and animal bodies. Arctic permafrost that has been frozen for millennia melts, forming thermokarst lakes, where methane bubbles up, unlocking greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Thermokarst lakes, the most widespread form of abrupt permafrost thaw, occur when soil warming melts ground ice, causing land surface collapse.