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Title: WETCHIMP-WSL: Intercomparison of wetland methane emissions models over West Siberia

Journal Article · · Biogeosciences (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [4];  [12];  [13];  [14];  [15];  [16];  [17];  [18];  [18] more »;  [7];  [19];  [20] « less
  1. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
  2. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Victoria (Canada)
  3. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba (Japan)
  4. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  5. Univ. of Bern, Bern (Switzerland)
  6. Univ. of Bern, Bern (Switzerland); Imperial College, Ascot (United Kingdom)
  7. Auburn Univ., Auburn, AL (United States)
  8. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States); Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  9. City Univ. of New York, New York, NY (United States); Univ. of Hohenheim, Stuttgart (Germany)
  10. Moscow State Univ., Moscow (Russian Federation); Russain Academy of Sciences, Uspenskoe (Russia); Tomsk State Univ., Tomsk (Russia); Yugra State Univ., Khanty-Mantsiysk (Russia)
  11. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba (Japan); Tomsk State Univ., Tomsk (Russia)
  12. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  13. Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Moscow (Russian Federation)
  14. Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Moscow (Russian Federation); Kazan Federal Univ., Kazan (Russia)
  15. Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  16. City Univ. of New York, New York, NY (United States)
  17. Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States)
  18. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  19. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
  20. Univ. of Lausanne, Lausanne (Switzerland)
+ Show Author Affiliations

It is known that wetlands are the world's largest natural source of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The strong sensitivity of methane emissions to environmental factors such as soil temperature and moisture has led to concerns about potential positive feedbacks to climate change. This risk is particularly relevant at high latitudes, which have experienced pronounced warming and where thawing permafrost could potentially liberate large amounts of labile carbon over the next 100 years. However, global models disagree as to the magnitude and spatial distribution of emissions, due to uncertainties in wetland area and emissions per unit area and a scarcity of in situ observations. Recent intensive field campaigns across the West Siberian Lowland (WSL) make this an ideal region over which to assess the performance of large-scale process-based wetland models in a high-latitude environment. Here we present the results of a follow-up to the Wetland and Wetland CH4 Intercomparison of Models Project (WETCHIMP), focused on the West Siberian Lowland (WETCHIMP-WSL). We assessed 21 models and 5 inversions over this domain in terms of total CH4 emissions, simulated wetland areas, and CH4 fluxes per unit wetland area and compared these results to an intensive in situ CH4 flux data set, several wetland maps, and two satellite surface water products. We found that (a) despite the large scatter of individual estimates, 12-year mean estimates of annual total emissions over the WSL from forward models (5.34 ± 0.54 Tg CH4 yr-1), inversions (6.06 ± 1.22 Tg CH4 yr-1), and in situ observations (3.91 ± 1.29 Tg CH4 yr-1) largely agreed; (b) forward models using surface water products alone to estimate wetland areas suffered from severe biases in CH4 emissions; (c) the interannual time series of models that lacked either soil thermal physics appropriate to the high latitudes or realistic emissions from unsaturated peatlands tended to be dominated by a single environmental driver (inundation or air temperature), unlike those of inversions and more sophisticated forward models; (d) differences in biogeochemical schemes across models had relatively smaller influence over performance; and (e) multiyear or multidecade observational records are crucial for evaluating models' responses to long-term climate change.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0007007; AC02-05CH11231; AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1209490
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1265354
Journal Information:
Biogeosciences (Online), Vol. 12, Issue 11; ISSN 1726-4189
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 78 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cold season emissions dominate the Arctic tundra methane budget journal December 2015
Attribution of changes in global wetland methane emissions from pre-industrial to present using CLM4.5-BGC journal March 2016
Global wetland contribution to 2000–2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics journal September 2017
Analysis of the Diurnal, Weekly, and Seasonal Cycles and Annual Trends in Atmospheric CO2 and CH4 at Tower Network in Siberia from 2005 to 2016 journal November 2019
Methane Content in Ground Ice and Sediments of the Kara Sea Coast journal November 2018
Soil Moisture Monitoring in a Temperate Peatland Using Multi-Sensor Remote Sensing and Linear Mixed Effects journal June 2018
A High-Resolution Airborne Color-Infrared Camera Water Mask for the NASA ABoVE Campaign journal September 2019
Development and Evaluation of a Multi-Year Fractional Surface Water Data Set Derived from Active/Passive Microwave Remote Sensing Data journal December 2015
Using δ 13 C-CH 4 and δ D-CH 4 to constrain Arctic methane emissions journal January 2016
Atmospheric constraints on the methane emissions from the East Siberian Shelf journal January 2016
Methane fluxes in the high northern latitudes for 2005–2013 estimated using a Bayesian atmospheric inversion journal January 2017
Reviews and syntheses: Four decades of modeling methane cycling in terrestrial ecosystems journal January 2016
A multi-scale comparison of modeled and observed seasonal methane emissions in northern wetlands journal January 2016
Monthly gridded data product of northern wetland methane emissions based on upscaling eddy covariance observations journal January 2019
Calibrating the sqHIMMELI v1.0 wetland methane emission model with hierarchical modeling and adaptive MCMC journal January 2018
Consumption of atmospheric methane by the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau alpine steppe ecosystem journal January 2018
Space‐Based Observations for Understanding Changes in the Arctic‐Boreal Zone journal January 2020
Reduced net methane emissions due to microbial methane oxidation in a warmer Arctic journal March 2020
Assessment of the theoretical limit in instrumental detectability of northern high-latitude methane sources using δ13CCH4 atmospheric signals journal January 2019
Modeling micro-topographic controls on boreal peatland hydrology and methane fluxes journal January 2015
Year-round simulated methane emissions from a permafrost ecosystem in Northeast Siberia journal January 2018
The global methane budget 2000–2012 journal January 2016
Global wetland contribution to 2000–2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics text January 2017
Variability and quasi-decadal changes in the methane budget over the period 2000–2012 text January 2017
Monthly gridded data product of northern wetland methane emissions based on upscaling eddy covariance observations text January 2019
A New Process-Based Soil Methane Scheme: Evaluation Over Arctic Field Sites With the ISBA Land Surface Model journal January 2019
Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI): facing the challenges and pathways of global change in the twenty-first century journal December 2017
An assessment of natural methane fluxes simulated by the CLASS-CTEM model journal January 2018
The global methane budget 2000--2012 text January 2016

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