Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 115, Issue 15, Pages 3882-3887Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1719903115
Keywords
climate system; permafrost dynamics; carbon dynamics; permafrost carbon-climate feedback; soil carbon
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation through the Research Coordination Network program
- National Science Foundation through the Study of Environmental Arctic Change program of the Permafrost Carbon Network
- National Science Foundation
- US Department of Agriculture Forest Service of the Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research
- US Department of Energy Office of Science (Biological and Environmental Research)
- University of Victoria
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada Graduate Scholarships
- NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience
- Joint Department of Energy and Climate Change/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme [GA01101]
- European Commission Seventh Framework Programme project [PAGE21, 282700]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Office of Polar Programs (OPP) [1304152, 1304220, 1304271] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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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 km(2) for the RCP4.5 climate and between 6 and 16 million km(2) for the RCP8.5 climate. For the RCP4.5 projection, cumulative change in soil carbon varied between 66-Pg C (10(15)-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.
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