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Large loss of CO2 in winter observed across the northern permafrost region

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 852–857 (2019)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 08 November 2019

This article has been updated

Abstract

Recent warming in the Arctic, which has been amplified during the winter1,2,3, greatly enhances microbial decomposition of soil organic matter and subsequent release of carbon dioxide (CO2)4. However, the amount of CO2 released in winter is not known and has not been well represented by ecosystem models or empirically based estimates5,6. Here we synthesize regional in situ observations of CO2 flux from Arctic and boreal soils to assess current and future winter carbon losses from the northern permafrost domain. We estimate a contemporary loss of 1,662 TgC per year from the permafrost region during the winter season (October–April). This loss is greater than the average growing season carbon uptake for this region estimated from process models (−1,032 TgC per year). Extending model predictions to warmer conditions up to 2100 indicates that winter CO2 emissions will increase 17% under a moderate mitigation scenario—Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5—and 41% under business-as-usual emissions scenario—Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5. Our results provide a baseline for winter CO2 emissions from northern terrestrial regions and indicate that enhanced soil CO2 loss due to winter warming may offset growing season carbon uptake under future climatic conditions.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of in situ data included in this winter CO2 flux synthesis.
Fig. 2: Effect of soil temperature on CO2 release from soils.
Fig. 3: Pan-Arctic winter CO2 emissions under current and future climate scenarios.
Fig. 4: Projected annual CO2 emissions during the winter for the northern permafrost region.

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Data availability

Data are archived and freely available at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center. The synthesis dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1692. Monthly carbon flux maps (25 km, October–April, 2003–2018; 2018–2100 for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) are available at https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1683.

Change history

  • 08 November 2019

    An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by funding from NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE; grant no. NNX15AT81A to S.M.N.), with additional funding from NASA New Investigator Program (grant no. NNX17AF16G to J.D.W.), National Science Foundation (grant nos. 955713 and 1331083 to E.A.G.S.; no. 1503559 to E.E.J.), the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic Project, Department of Energy Office of Science to E.E.J., Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research to J.D.J and R.M. (grant no. DE-AC02-06CH11357), National Research Foundation of Korea (grant nos. NRF-2016M1A5A1901769 and KOPRI-PN-19081 to B.-Y.L. and Y.K.), and funds that supported the data included in this synthesis.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Susan. M. Natali, Jennifer D. Watts.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA

    Susan M. Natali, Jennifer D. Watts, Brendan M. Rogers, Stefano Potter, Sarah M. Ludwig, Leah Birch & Christina Minions

  2. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Anne-Katrin Selbmann

  3. Environment and Natural Resources Institute, University of Alaska, Anchorage, AK, USA

    Patrick F. Sullivan

  4. Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Benjamin W. Abbott

  5. Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    Kyle A. Arndt, Jordan P. Goodrich, Aram A. M. Kalhori, Walter C. Oechel, Yihui Wang, Xiaofeng Xu & Donatella Zona

  6. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden

    Mats P. Björkman

  7. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    A. Anthony Bloom & Nima Madani

  8. Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Gerardo Celis & Edward A. G. Schuur

  9. Department of Bioscience, Arctic Research Centre, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Torben R. Christensen, Magnus Lund & Niels M. Schmidt

  10. NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway

    Casper T. Christiansen

  11. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA

    Roisin Commane

  12. Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

    Elisabeth J. Cooper

  13. Department of Geological Sciences and Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Patrick Crill

  14. Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Claudia Czimczik

  15. Northeast Science Station, Pacific Geographical Institute, Cherskii, Russia

    Sergey Davydov

  16. Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

    Jinyang Du & John S. Kimball

  17. Department of Earth Sciences, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Jocelyn E. Egan

  18. Center for Permafrost, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Bo Elberling

  19. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Eugenie S. Euskirchen, Hélène Genet & A. David McGuire

  20. Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Thomas Friborg & Klaus S. Larsen

  21. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany

    Mathias Göckede

  22. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Jordan P. Goodrich

  23. Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Paul Grogan

  24. School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, USA

    Manuel Helbig

  25. Department of Geography & Center for Northern Studies, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Manuel Helbig & Oliver Sonnentag

  26. Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Elchin E. Jafarov

  27. Environmental Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Julie D. Jastrow & Roser Matamala

  28. International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Yongwon Kim

  29. Institute of Soil Science, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Lars Kutzbach

  30. Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

    Mark J. Lara

  31. Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, Republic of Korea

    Bang-Yong Lee

  32. Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China

    Zhihua Liu

  33. Department of Geography, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA

    Michael M. Loranty

  34. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Massimo Lupascu

  35. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Avni Malhotra

  36. Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center, US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Jack McFarland & Mark P. Waldrop

  37. Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Anders Michelsen

  38. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Walter C. Oechel

  39. Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    David Olefeldt

  40. Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Frans-Jan W. Parmentier & Norbert Pirk

  41. Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Frans-Jan W. Parmentier & Norbert Pirk

  42. Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Ben Poulter

  43. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    William Quinton

  44. Ecohydrology Research Group, Water Institute and Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Fereidoun Rezanezhad

  45. St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada

    David Risk

  46. GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Telegrafenberg, Potsdam, Germany

    Torsten Sachs & Christian Wille

  47. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Kevin Schaefer

  48. Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Philipp R. Semenchuk

  49. The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    Gaius Shaver

  50. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Gregory Starr

  51. Department of Environmental and Biological Science, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    Claire C. Treat

  52. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA

    Jeffrey Welker

  53. Ecology and Genetics Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu Finland and UArctic, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Jeffrey Welker

  54. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Zhen Zhang

  55. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Qianlai Zhuang

  56. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Donatella Zona

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  1. Susan M. Natali
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S.M.N., J.D.W. and B.M.R conceived the work. B.W.A., G.C., C.T.C., H.G., E.E.J., M.M.L., S.M.L., M.L., A.M., C.M., S.M.N., F.R., B.M.R., K.S., A.-K.S., C.C.T., Y.W. and X.X. extracted unpublished data. K.A.A, M.P.B, G.C, T.R.C, E.J.C, C.T.C., S.D., J.D., J.E.E., B.E., E.S.E., T.F., M.G., J.P.G., P.G., M.H., J.D.J., A.A.M.K., Y.K., L.K., K.S.L., M.L., R.M., J.M., A.M., S.M.N., W.C.O., F.-J.W.P., N.P., W.Q., D.R., T.S., N.M.S., E.A.G.S, P.R.S., O.S., P.F.S., M.P.W., C.W. and D.Z. provided unpublished or raw data. L.B., A.A.B., J.D., J.S.K., Z.L., N.M., A.D.M., B.P. and Z.Z. provided modelled data and results. S.M.L., C.M., S.M.N., S.P. and J.D.W. prepared tables and figures. G.C., H.G., M.J.L., M.M.L., S.M.L, S.M.N., S.P., B.M.R., P.F.S. and J.D.W. performed statistical analyses, including BRT modelling. S.P., B.M.R. and J.W. led the BRT upscaling or projection analyses. All authors contributed to data interpretation and preparation of manuscript text.

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Correspondence to Susan M. Natali.

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Supplementary methods, Figs. 1–6, Tables 1–8 and references.

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Natali, S.M., Watts, J.D., Rogers, B.M. et al. Large loss of CO2 in winter observed across the northern permafrost region. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 852–857 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0592-8

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