Climate-carbon feedback tradeoff between Arctic and alpine permafrost under warming

Journal Article · Fri Sep 19 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Science Advances

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adt8366· OSTI ID:2997780

Bao, Tao; Xu, Xiyan; Jia, Gensuo; Zhu, Xingru; Riley, William J; Yang, Yuanhe

Whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from permafrost will trigger positive climate feedbacks under warming remains unknown. Here, we synthesized the response of growing season carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions to experimentally manipulated warming of ~2°C for permafrost in alpine and Arctic regions. Warming weakened the GHG sink of alpine permafrost, thereby increasing (13%) its global warming potential, but strengthened the GHG sink of Arctic permafrost and decreased (-10%) its global warming potential. When warming caused drying of alpine permafrost soils, the CO2 sink weakened but the CH4 sink increased. In contrast, warming of relatively wet Arctic permafrost increased the CO2 sink and CH4 source. Warming led to much stronger increases of the N2O source in alpine than Arctic permafrost. Although keeping additional warming below 2°C in permafrost regions can avoid the positive permafrost-climate feedback, measures are needed to maintain fragile carbon sink of alpine permafrost ecosystems.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23), Climate and Environmental Sciences Division (SC-23.1 )
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 2997780
• Journal Information: Science Advances, Journal Name: Science Advances Journal Issue: 38 Vol. 11
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English