This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

The Arctic's warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet on average. And as permafrost becomes, well, not as permafrost becomes well not so perma

microbes are warming up feasting on organic compounds in the thawed soil the microbes

then belch methane a a potent greenhouse gas, meaning that the warming Arctic could become a big source of carbon pollution.

But maybe it won't, because it turns out there are also a lot of microbes that like to snack on the

methane waste their buddies emit. In fact some 90% of the methane bubbling up

through Arctic soils is already soaked up this way. Now researchers report that they've found a new

strain of methane-eating microbes in soil samples from Axel Heiberg Island in the

Canadian High Arctic. The soils on the island are not rich in carbon, meaning there's not a lot of methane waste.

So these still unnamed bacteria instead harvest the gas straight out of the air.

And as that air warms up, they're getting hungrier. The scientists

project that as temperatures rise over the next century, the bugs could gobble up

anywhere from five to thirty times the amount of methane they eat today. The study appears in the Isme Journal.

Most Arctic permafrost, 87%, is actually carbon-poor mineraly stuff, like the soil on

Axel Heberg Island, meaning much of the

Arctic could soon be sucking up methane. It's still too early to say whether

the region could actually become a carbon sink, but the researchers say that at the very least climate models need to reflect

this latest nuance of our warming planet.

Thanks for the minute.

For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Christopher and Dahlia.