"Runaway Global Warming Becomes a Concern as Permafrost Melts"

"GOOSE LAKE, Northwest Territories -- In a fragile landscape where footsteps leave an imprint for years, Jennifer Baltzer stood and surveyed the surrounding bog of green sphagnum moss. Black spruce trees tilted here and there like drunkards.

Using a metal rod, Baltzer, an ecologist with Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, pierced the ground near a spruce.

'You are jamming into ice there,' she said. Without that freeze, the unstable spruce trees would entirely lose their footing and drown."

Gayathri Vaidyanathan reports for ClimateWire November 19, 2015, in the second part of a four-part series.

PART ONE: "What We Don't Know About the Carbon Cycle Could Hurt You"

PART THREE: "Fires Rapidly Claim More Forests And Peatland in the Arctic"