Climate change and the permafrost carbon feedback

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Abstract

Large quantities of organic carbon are stored in frozen soils (permafrost) within Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. A warming climate can induce environmental changes that accelerate the microbial breakdown of organic carbon and the release of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. This feedback can accelerate climate change, but the magnitude and timing of greenhouse gas emission from these regions and their impact on climate change remain uncertain. Here we find that current evidence suggests a gradual and prolonged release of greenhouse gas emissions in a warming climate and present a research strategy with which to target poorly understood aspects of permafrost carbon dynamics.

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Disappearing Arctic lakes.

L. Smith, Y. Sheng, G. M. MacDonald … (2005)

Historical archived satellite images were compared with contemporary satellite data to track ongoing changes in more than 10,000 large lakes in rapidly warming Siberia. A widespread decline in lake abundance and area has occurred since 1973, despite slight precipitation increases to the region. The spatial pattern of lake disappearance suggests (i) that thaw and "breaching" of permafrost is driving the observed losses, by enabling rapid lake draining into the subsurface; and (ii) a conceptual model in which high-latitude warming of permafrost triggers an initial but transitory phase of lake and wetland expansion, followed by their widespread disappearance.

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Sensitivity of the carbon cycle in the Arctic to climate change

A David McGuire, Leif G. Anderson, Torben Christensen … (2009)

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Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming.

K. M. Walter, S A Zimov, J. Chanton … (2006)

Large uncertainties in the budget of atmospheric methane, an important greenhouse gas, limit the accuracy of climate change projections. Thaw lakes in North Siberia are known to emit methane, but the magnitude of these emissions remains uncertain because most methane is released through ebullition (bubbling), which is spatially and temporally variable. Here we report a new method of measuring ebullition and use it to quantify methane emissions from two thaw lakes in North Siberia. We show that ebullition accounts for 95 per cent of methane emissions from these lakes, and that methane flux from thaw lakes in our study region may be five times higher than previously estimated. Extrapolation of these fluxes indicates that thaw lakes in North Siberia emit 3.8 teragrams of methane per year, which increases present estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands (< 6-40 teragrams per year; refs 1, 2, 4-6) by between 10 and 63 per cent. We find that thawing permafrost along lake margins accounts for most of the methane released from the lakes, and estimate that an expansion of thaw lakes between 1974 and 2000, which was concurrent with regional warming, increased methane emissions in our study region by 58 per cent. Furthermore, the Pleistocene age (35,260-42,900 years) of methane emitted from hotspots along thawing lake margins indicates that this positive feedback to climate warming has led to the release of old carbon stocks previously stored in permafrost.