Talk:Permafrost carbon cycle

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Section sizes

Section size for Permafrost carbon cycle (12 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	2,704	2,704
Storage	1,899	7,951
Processes	2,331	2,331
Current estimates	3,721	3,721
Carbon release from the permafrost	12,134	47,911
Carbon dioxide emissions	7,064	7,064
Methane emissions	12,996	12,996
Subsea permafrost	2,383	2,383
Cumulative	13,334	13,334
See also	81	81
References	33	33
External links	426	426
Total	59,106	59,106

Merge into permafrost?[edit]

This seems to be an important topic but it's rather hidden in this article, with low pageviews. Would there be potential to merge it into permafrost? I see long excerpts from this article being used at arctic methane emissions (also low pageviews). It's good that excerpts are used but could a case also be made for merging? Pinging User:InformationToKnowledge. A comparison of pageviews for the 3 articles is here. EMsmile (talk) 10:26, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you have probably already seen from the GA review on permafrost that the goal was to move in the opposite direction, with the section on microorganisms made into a sub-article not unlike this one. I would say that the corresponding section in the permafrost article, as written, now provides the most important things a typical reader would need to know at a glance, leaving this page free to go into detail.

Effectively, that section answers the "What?" question, while the subarticle answers "What?" and "How?". Considering the vast number of permafrost carbon papers (see the graph I just added to the main article) it wasn't going to be feasible to do it any other way. I have added information and images like that graph from a major, recent (still only a year old) review, but I am certain that this article could still be made better in principle. In practice, though, it's likely not as important as making sure nothing with medium-to-high views is languishing as badly as the cryosphere article did before your intervention. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation. I am all for spin-off articles and sub-articles but it's important that the structure is clear and that people can see where from the main article they can jump off into the sub-article for more details. I think this doesn't come out clearly at permafrost yet. And as the topic of permafrost melting is so important it's also not clear how much about the permafrost melting should be at permafrost and how much at Permafrost carbon cycle. Maybe it would help if we had a dedicated sub-article called permafrost melting? At the moment the term "permafrost melting" doesn't even redirect to anywhere. I've set it up now as a redirect to Permafrost#Impacts of climate change. Anyway, so overall, the structure/sub-structure between permafrost and permafrost carbon cycle is not clear to me. Perhaps a suitable hatnote at permafrost carbon cycle could help. EMsmile (talk) 09:41, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First and foremost: I suspect we didn't have that redirect because that term is completely wrong! Melting is about a complete state change from solid to liquid (i.e. ice, glass, and various metals and rocks at really high temperatures). Since the majority of permafrost by weight is not ice, but simply soil and rocks which were solid and still stay solid, it should be called permafrost thaw.

To be fair, it is a sadly common mistake (a brief search can easily find several articles from generally reputable organizations whose title still uses melting), and unfortunately, there do not seem to be any easily searchable articles talking about this, so a tweet from a notable subject matter expert would have to do. Even so, I do not think we should perpetuate it.

And again, we are now getting around 4,000 papers on permafrost emissions, every single year (not counting the rarer papers on infrastructure and the like). Listing even 1% of that in the main article clearly isn't feasible. Yet, since most of them describe the details which are very interesting but not particularly important to anyone who is not directly involved in trying to preserve permafrost or the like, there luckily not as much need for that. Consequently, they can go into this sub-article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. Having a redirect from "permafrost melting" to permafrost carbon cycle can help eliminate the wrong usage of the term. So I think redirects even from "wrong terms" to the right terms is important & useful. (and the wrong usage of the term could also be mentioned under "terminology").

You haven't yet answered my question about how the articles fit together exactly, and where the jump-off point(s) are exactly. So far it seems to me that whereever permafrost talks about the issue of thawing, we want people to know that they can go to permafrost carbon cycle for more detail, is that right? But is permafrost carbon cycle a logical article title in that case? Should it rather be permafrost thaw as the more common name (as per WP:COMMONNAME? I just want to avoid that in future, content about the thawing gets added to both articles in parallel. Or that it only gets added to the main article permafrost but remains outdated at permafrost carbon cycle, or vice versa. EMsmile (talk) 11:02, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, not "whereever": only when it concerns the emissions resulting from that thaw. Much of the permafrost article is devoted to how permafrost thaw results in infrastructure collapse (plus, the emerging research on leaking pollutants): a much more immediate and directly expensive impact than the hard-to-see-with-naked-eye increase in emissions. If the title was permafrost thaw, then it would be obligated to cover all two/three, shunting some infrastructure/pollution information to sub-article and diluting its focus - yet, since there's such a disparity in size between the amount of research on these disparate impacts, it would still look like a small sub-section next to the dominant information on emissions. It just wouldn't look good. No such issue occurs with the current title. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:44, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]