The MIDNIGHT Sun Golf Course, Fairbanks, Alaska, says that you will never get the exact same shot twice. The Arctic is heating faster than other parts of the world, and the underground permafrost melts, causing the fairways to be deformed. This defrost express unlocks old organic matter a lot. The world’s permafrost contains twice the amount of carbon as that found in the atmosphere. Microbes eat the carbon dioxide and release plumes of methane. This gas is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. Global temperatures rise as permafrost thaws, which releases more methane. This causes more permafrost to thaw, which in turn releases more methane. Scientists are using a variety of tech to understand this dreaded climate feedback loop.

“We know that the future of the Arctic will be all because of warming,” Tyler R. Jones, a geochemist from the University of Colorado, Boulder, says. We need to be better prepared by understanding permafrost environments and modeling them. We want to see what is possible.”

The perfect location for scientists to fly their drones is Fairways. The 10-foot wingspan of the aircraft, which is equipped with instruments to measure greenhouse gases, is impressive. It doesn’t have wheels, so the team must belly-land it. Jones states, “You can simply do laps around an interesting feature and get a profile for a methane plume.” “The golfers let us play for a while, and then we land our drone. Then they hit their shots.

A site of special interest or dread lies nearby, depending on your perspective. Big Trail Lake is the result of a violent thermokarst event in which the ground collapses, and permafrost melts rapidly. These craters are filled with water and provide ideal conditions for microbes that produce methane. Big Trail Lake is one of Alaska’s most prolific methane-emitting lakes. The team collects methane data using a floating tower. Nicholas Hasson, the University of Alaska Fairbanks geophysicist, says that this is one of the most complex science experiments taking place in the Arctic because of the variety of instruments. “We are kind of methane detectives.”

A drone is able to collect samples from different altitudes across entire landscapes. This allows researchers to create a detailed map of the aerial methane concentrations.

A Castner glacier ice arch in Alaska. The Arctic is losing ice from its many glaciers, but also from the melting permafrost.

Chuck Smallwood, Sandia National Laboratories scientist, watches Hasson collect a core sample. Smallwood studies microbes in the laboratory, while Hasson is more interested in the permafrost’s characteristics. He can control the growing conditions to better understand how microbes might make methane as Alaska heats.

North of Fairbanks, this thermokarst crater was dug because it was threatened by a tunnel beneath the water. Researchers took advantage of this situation to measure methane emissions from a thermokarst not filled with water.

Hasson examines the cross-section of permafrost. The blue mass is an uncut ice wedge that is surrounded by carbon-rich silt. Permafrost melts into pools filled with water as methane-emitting microbes eat ancient plant material.

The ratio of organic matter to ice in permafrost is prone to change. Understanding the interactions between these two is crucial to determine how much methane will be released by a warming landscape.