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Diminishing lake area across the northern permafrost zone

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 202–209 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Rapid warming in the Arctic is driving permafrost thaw and lake area changes, with implications for wildlife, subsistence living and climate feedbacks. Models suggest that initial permafrost thaw will result in increased lake area, with continued warming and advanced thaw eventually leading to decreased lake area after ~60–150 years. Here, we review data from 139 sites in 57 publications tracking the direction of lake area change. In the discontinuous permafrost zone, the majority of sites exhibit decreasing lake area, whereas in the continuous zone, the number of sites with increasing lake area is similar to the number with decreasing lake area. These trends suggest that lake drainage due to permafrost thaw is occurring sooner than anticipated. Across the northern permafrost zone, lake area trends are unrelated to precipitation trends and, in most regions, lake area change is heterogeneous. Together, these results indicate that the primary driver of lake area change is permafrost thaw, rather than changes in precipitation and/or evapotranspiration. The observed emergence of lake area trends projected to occur no earlier than the mid-twenty-first century indicates that current models do not adequately represent the processes driving permafrost thaw and associated lake drainage.

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Fig. 1: Observations of net lake area change binned by permafrost zone100 and mapped by geographic location.
Fig. 2: Observations of net lake area change binned by annual precipitation trend and permafrost zone.
Fig. 3: Observations of lake area trends binned by ground-ice content.

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Data availability

This study relies on previously published data. A list of all previously published studies used in this analysis is available in the Supplementary Information.

The climate trends were generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service Information (2022) ERA5-Land hourly data (2 m temperature, snowfall, total precipitation; https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/10.24381/cds.e2161bac?tab=overview). Permafrost extent, ground-ice content and overburden thickness data was from the Circum-Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground-Ice Conditions, Version 2 (https://doi.org/10.7265/skbg-kf16). Lake density was from the Boreal–Arctic Wetland and Lake Dataset (https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A2C824F9X). Thermokarst lake and thermokarst wetland coverage was from the Arctic Circumpolar Distribution and Soil Carbon of Thermokarst Landscapes dataset (https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1332). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

R code used to perform analyses is available on GitHub (https://github.com/webb-e/Lake_area_change).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank K. Martin of the University of Florida CLAS Communications Support Office for help with initial design of Box 1, and J. Lichstein, M. Loranty, J. Vogel and S. Gerber for constructive feedback on an early version of the manuscript. This work was supported by NASA FINESST award 80NSSC19K134 to E.E.W. and J. Lichstein, and NSF awards OPP-1722572/OPP-2051888 and RISE-1927872/ICER-2052107 to A.K.L.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Elizabeth E. Webb

  2. Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA

    Anna K. Liljedahl

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  1. Elizabeth E. Webb
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Contributions

E.E.W. developed the concept, designed the analyses and wrote the manuscript with assistance from A.K.L. A.K.L. conceived of the conceptual figure (Box 1). E.E.W. conducted the literature search, performed the analyses and created the figures.

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Correspondence to Elizabeth E. Webb.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Laurence Smith, Christopher Burn and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Tom Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Trends in climate variables, 1981–2020.

Values are the Sen’s slope of the variable (average annual temperature, total annual precipitation, annual rainfall, and annual snowfall,) vs. year and represent the rate of change over time. Data were obtained from the ERA5-Land reanalysis dataset102. Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service Information [2022].

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 The relationship between trends in annual precipitation (1981–2020) and lake area trend separated by regions with similar climate drivers.

Trends in annual precipitation were not related to trends in lake area change across the northern permafrost zone (χ2 = 1.8, df = 2, p = 0.4). Circles show the locations of the study sites included in our analysis. Annual precipitation trends were calculated using the ERA-5 Land hourly dataset102. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service Information [2022].

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Study sites tracking lake area change arranged by start date and separated by permafrost zone.

Each bar shows the study period and lake area trend direction. On average, study length was 32 years (minimum: 7 years, maximum: 68 years), and the most common starting decade was the 1970s (35%) with 22% of studies beginning before 1970 and only 11% of studies beginning in the 2000s. The earliest starting (ending) year was 1944 (1998) the latest was 2002 (2020).

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, and Supplementary Fig. 1.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Graphical source data.

Source Data Fig. 2

Graphical source data; see source data for Extended Data Fig. 1 for precipitation trend source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Graphical source data.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Graphical source data (band 1 = annual temp; band 2 = rain; band 3 = snow; band 4 = total precipitation).

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Graphical source data.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3

Graphical source data.

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Webb, E.E., Liljedahl, A.K. Diminishing lake area across the northern permafrost zone. Nat. Geosci. 16, 202–209 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01128-z

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