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Title: Dependence of the evolution of carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region on the trajectory of climate change

Journal Article · · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [13]; ORCiD logo [14]; ORCiD logo [15];  [16];  [17];  [18];  [19] more »;  [20]; ORCiD logo [19];  [21] « less
  1. Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK (United States). US Geological Survey, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
  2. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States). Climate and Global Dynamics Lab.
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division
  4. Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK (United States). Inst. of Arctic Biology
  5. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  6. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Environmental Sciences Division; Auburn Univ., AL (United States). International Center for Climate and Global Change Research
  7. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  8. St. Francis Xavier Univ., Antigonish, NS (Canada). Dept. of Earth Sciences
  9. Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK (United States). Geophysical Inst.
  10. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Gif-sur-Yvette (France). Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique–CNRS–Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines; Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble (France)
  11. Alfred Wegener Inst. for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam (Germany); Beijing Normal Univ., Beijing (China)
  12. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Gif-sur-Yvette (France). Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique–CNRS–Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
  13. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble (France); oIrstea, Hydrology–Hydraulics Research Unit, Villeurbanne Cedex (France)
  14. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Environmental Sciences Division; Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME (United States). School of Forest Resources
  15. Beijing Normal Univ., Beijing (China)
  16. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble (France)
  17. Beijing Normal Univ., Beijing (China); Univ. of Lapland, Rovaniemi (Finland). Arctic Centre
  18. Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK (United States). Geophysical Inst.; Tyumen State Univ., Tyumen (Russia). International Inst. of Cryology and Cryosphy
  19. Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff, AZ (United States). Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, and Dept. of Biological Sciences
  20. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). National Snow and Ice Data Center
  21. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States). Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
+ Show Author Affiliations

We conducted a model-based assessment of changes in permafrost area and carbon storage for simulations driven by RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 projections between 2010 and 2299 for the northern permafrost region. All models simulating carbon represented soil with depth, a critical structural feature needed to represent the permafrost carbon-climate feedback, but that is not a universal feature of all climate models. Between 2010 and 2299, simulations indicated losses of permafrost between 3 and 5 million km2 for the RCP4.5 climate and between 6 and 16 million km2 for the RCP8.5 climate. For the RCP4.5 projection, cumulative change in soil carbon varied between 66-Pg C (1015-g carbon) loss to 70-Pg C gain. For the RCP8.5 projection, losses in soil carbon varied between 74 and 652 Pg C (mean loss, 341 Pg C). For the RCP4.5 projection, gains in vegetation carbon were largely responsible for the overall projected net gains in ecosystem carbon by 2299 (8- to 244-Pg C gains). In contrast, for the RCP8.5 projection, gains in vegetation carbon were not great enough to compensate for the losses of carbon projected by four of the five models; changes in ecosystem carbon ranged from a 641-Pg C loss to a 167-Pg C gain (mean, 208-Pg C loss). The models indicate that substantial net losses of ecosystem carbon would not occur until after 2100. This assessment suggests that effective mitigation efforts during the remainder of this century could attenuate the negative consequences of the permafrost carbon-climate feedback.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396; 282700; AC02-05CH11231; AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1431083
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1465422; OSTI ID: 1468039
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-18-20805
Journal Information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 115, Issue 15; ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher:
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 209 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (49)

The role of environmental driving factors in historical and projected carbon dynamics of wetland ecosystems in Alaska journal December 2016
Assessing historical and projected carbon balance of Alaska: A synthesis of results and policy/management implications journal July 2018
Microbial carbon and nitrogen processes in high‐Arctic riparian soils journal January 2020
Exploring near-surface ground ice distribution in patterned-ground tundra: correlations with topography, soil and vegetation journal August 2019
The Expanding Footprint of Rapid Arctic Change journal March 2019
The Response of Permafrost and High‐Latitude Ecosystems Under Large‐Scale Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Its Termination journal June 2019
Modeling Climate Change Impacts on an Arctic Polygonal Tundra: 2. Changes in CO 2 and CH 4 Exchange Depend on Rates of Permafrost Thaw as Affected by Changes in Vegetation and Drainage journal May 2019
Increasing Organic Carbon Biolability With Depth in Yedoma Permafrost: Ramifications for Future Climate Change journal July 2019
The Community Land Model Version 5: Description of New Features, Benchmarking, and Impact of Forcing Uncertainty journal December 2019
Path Independence of Carbon Budgets When Meeting a Stringent Global Mean Temperature Target After an Overshoot journal December 2019
The Role of Permafrost in Eurasian Land‐Atmosphere Interactions journal November 2019
Methane Production Pathway Regulated Proximally by Substrate Availability and Distally by Temperature in a High‐Latitude Mire Complex journal October 2019
Space‐Based Observations for Understanding Changes in the Arctic‐Boreal Zone journal January 2020
Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release journal April 2019
21st-century modeled permafrost carbon emissions accelerated by abrupt thaw beneath lakes journal August 2018
Climate policy implications of nonlinear decline of Arctic land permafrost and other cryosphere elements journal April 2019
Controls of soil organic matter on soil thermal dynamics in the northern high latitudes journal July 2019
Integrating hydrology and biogeochemistry across frozen landscapes journal November 2019
Large loss of CO2 in winter observed across the northern permafrost region journal October 2019
Reduced net methane emissions due to microbial methane oxidation in a warmer Arctic journal March 2020
Current level and rate of warming determine emissions budgets under ambitious mitigation journal June 2018
Carbon release through abrupt permafrost thaw journal February 2020
Revealing biogeochemical signatures of Arctic landscapes with river chemistry journal September 2019
Pathway-dependent fate of permafrost region carbon journal August 2018
Divergent patterns of experimental and model-derived permafrost ecosystem carbon dynamics in response to Arctic warming journal October 2018
The Arctic-Boreal vulnerability experiment model benchmarking system journal May 2019
Recent peat and carbon accumulation following the Little Ice Age in northwestern Québec, Canada journal June 2019
Evaluation of simulated soil carbon dynamics in Arctic-Boreal ecosystems journal February 2020
The carbon sink due to shrub growth on Arctic tundra: a case study in a carbon-poor soil in eastern Canada journal September 2019
Warming alters surface soil organic matter composition despite unchanged carbon stocks in a Tibetan permafrost ecosystem journal April 2020
Ecosystem carbon response of an Arctic peatland to simulated permafrost thaw journal February 2019
Increased high‐latitude photosynthetic carbon gain offset by respiration carbon loss during an anomalous warm winter to spring transition journal November 2019
Higher than expected CO 2 fertilization inferred from leaf to global observations journal February 2020
The polar regions in a 2°C warmer world journal December 2019
Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau journal May 2020
A synthesis dataset of permafrost-affected soil thermal conditions for Alaska, USA journal January 2018
A long-term (2002 to 2017) record of closed-path and open-path eddy covariance CO2 net ecosystem exchange fluxes from the Siberian Arctic journal January 2019
A 16-year record (2002–2017) of permafrost, active-layer, and meteorological conditions at the Samoylov Island Arctic permafrost research site, Lena River delta, northern Siberia: an opportunity to validate remote-sensing data and land surface, snow, and permafrost models journal January 2019
Thaw processes in ice-rich permafrost landscapes represented with laterally coupled tiles in a land surface model journal January 2019
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The Response of Permafrost and High‐Latitude Ecosystems under Large‐Scale Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and its Termination text January 2019
Performance evaluation of global hydrological models in six large Pan-Arctic watersheds journal November 2020
Protection of Permafrost Soils from Thawing by Increasing Herbivore Density journal March 2020
Disentangling land model uncertainty via Matrix-based Ensemble Model Inter-comparison Platform (MEMIP) journal February 2022
Developments and applications of terrestrial biosphere model journal January 2020
Arctic aquatic graminoid tundra responses to nutrient availability journal January 2021
Invited perspective: What lies beneath a changing Arctic? journal February 2021

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Earth Sciences
permafrost carbon feedback