Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-MATHEMATICAL PHYSICAL AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES
Volume 380, Issue 2215, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2021.0022
Keywords
methane; radiative forcing; Arctic; permafrost; remote sensing; landcover
Categories
Funding
- Northern Ecosystems Research for Undergraduates programme (NERU
- National Science Foundation REU) [EAR1063037]
- MacroSystems Biology grant [1241037]
- NASA Interdisciplinary Science grant (NASA) [NNX17AK10G]
- US National Science Foundation [DEB-1802825, DBI-2022070]
- US Department of Energy grants [DESC0004632, DE-SC0010580, DE-SC0016440]
- Swedish Research Council [2007-4547, 2013-5562, 2019-05764]
- Vinnova [2019-05764] Funding Source: Vinnova
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0010580, DE-SC0016440] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
- Swedish Research Council [2019-05764] Funding Source: Swedish Research Council
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Permafrost thawing affects ecological characteristics and alters greenhouse gas emissions, leading to a positive feedback to climate change.
Permafrost thaw increases active layer thickness, changes landscape hydrology and influences vegetation species composition. These changes alter belowground microbial and geochemical processes, affecting production, consumption and net emission rates of climate forcing trace gases. Net carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes determine the radiative forcing contribution from these climate-sensitive ecosystems. Permafrost peatlands may be amosaic of dry frozen hummocks, semi-thawed or perched sphagnum dominated areas, wet permafrost-free sedge dominated sites and open water ponds. We revisited estimates of climate forcing made for 1970 and 2000 for Stordalen Mire in northern Sweden and found the trend of increasing forcing continued into 2014. TheMire continued to transition from dry permafrost to sedge and open water areas, increasing by 100% and 35%, respectively, over the 45-year period, causing the net radiative forcing of Stordalen Mire to shift fromnegative to positive. This trend is driven by transitioning vegetation community composition, improved estimates of annual CO2 and CH4 exchange and a 22% increase in the IPCC's 100-year global warming potential (GWP_100) value for CH4. These results indicate that discontinuous permafrost ecosystems, while still remaining a net overall sink of C, can become a positive feedback to climate change on decadal timescales.
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