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Carbon release through abrupt permafrost thaw

Nature Geoscience volume 13, pages 138–143 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

The permafrost zone is expected to be a substantial carbon source to the atmosphere, yet large-scale models currently only simulate gradual changes in seasonally thawed soil. Abrupt thaw will probably occur in <20% of the permafrost zone but could affect half of permafrost carbon through collapsing ground, rapid erosion and landslides. Here, we synthesize the best available information and develop inventory models to simulate abrupt thaw impacts on permafrost carbon balance. Emissions across 2.5 million km2 of abrupt thaw could provide a similar climate feedback as gradual thaw emissions from the entire 18 million km2 permafrost region under the warming projection of Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5. While models forecast that gradual thaw may lead to net ecosystem carbon uptake under projections of Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, abrupt thaw emissions are likely to offset this potential carbon sink. Active hillslope erosional features will occupy 3% of abrupt thaw terrain by 2300 but emit one-third of abrupt thaw carbon losses. Thaw lakes and wetlands are methane hot spots but their carbon release is partially offset by slowly regrowing vegetation. After considering abrupt thaw stabilization, lake drainage and soil carbon uptake by vegetation regrowth, we conclude that models considering only gradual permafrost thaw are substantially underestimating carbon emissions from thawing permafrost.

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Fig. 1: Models of abrupt thaw succession.
Fig. 2: Simulated carbon release due to abrupt thaw.

Data availability

All synthesized data used as model inputs, plus associated references, are provided in the Supplementary Data. Modelled data that support the findings of this study are also provided in the Supplementary Data.

Code availability

RMD files containing full code for the three generalized abrupt thaw models are available at https://github.com/mturetsky/Abrupt-thaw-carbon-model.

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Acknowledgements

S. Frolking provided guidance on the radiative forcing calculations. M. Strimas-Mackey and A. McAdam provided assistance with the R coding. T. Douglas provided constructive feedback on the manuscript. This work is a product of the Permafrost Carbon Network and SEARCH Permafrost Action Team. We acknowledge support from NSERC (to M.R.T.), the PETA-CARB project (ERC number 338335) and BMBF KoPf project (to G.G.), and NSF ARCSS 1500931 and NASA ABoVE (to K.W.A.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Merritt R. Turetsky & Carolyn Gibson

  2. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Merritt R. Turetsky

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

    Benjamin W. Abbott

  4. United States Geological Survey, Reston, VA, USA

    Miriam C. Jones

  5. Water and Environmental Research Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Katey Walter Anthony

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

    David Olefeldt

  7. Center for Ecosystem Science and Society and Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Edward A. G. Schuur

  8. Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Guido Grosse

  9. Institute of Geosciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Guido Grosse

  10. Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Peter Kuhry, Gustaf Hugelius & A. Britta K. Sannel

  11. Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Peter Kuhry, Gustaf Hugelius & A. Britta K. Sannel

  12. Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Charles Koven

  13. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    David M. Lawrence

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

    A. David McGuire

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  1. Merritt R. Turetsky
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Contributions

M.R.T. and A.D.M. conceived of the study. B.W.A., M.C.J., K.W.A. and M.R.T. led the development of each abrupt thaw conceptual model. G.G. and C.G. participated in remote sensing analysis and synthesis. M.R.T., G.G. and K.W.A. led the synthesis of thaw lake data. M.R.T., M.C.J., D.O. and A.B.K.S. led the synthesis of permafrost peatland data. G.G. led the synthesis of head wall retreat rates. B.W.A. and E.A.G.S. led the synthesis of hillslope data. M.R.T. performed the simulations and wrote the paper. All authors commented on the analysis, interpretation and presentation of the data and were involved with the writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Merritt R. Turetsky.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Primary Handling Editors: Xujia Jiang; Heike Langenberg.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

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

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Turetsky, M.R., Abbott, B.W., Jones, M.C. et al. Carbon release through abrupt permafrost thaw. Nat. Geosci. 13, 138–143 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0526-0

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