Greenhouse gas release from arctic permafrost: positive feedback to climate warming (Invited)

The release of carbon (C) in the form of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost is one of the most likely and important positive feedbacks from the land to the atmosphere in a warmer world. Perennially frozen ground, known as permafrost, covers 20 percent of the Earth’s land surface. Recent accounting for C stored as far as 80m beneath the surface in permafrost (950 billion tons) more than doubles previous inventory estimates and is comparable to the current atmospheric CO2 burden of 750 billion tons. Permafrost organic C accumulated over tens of thousands of years. In its frozen state this C is sequestered from the atmosphere, mitigating climate warming. Long term borehole from Siberia and North America attest that permafrost is thawing. A third to half of permafrost is now within a degree to a degree and a half of thawing. In places where permafrost temperature crosses the critical 0°C threshold, ice melts causing thermokarst (ground surface collapse). Thermokarst features such as sink holes, pits, slope failure, mud flows, and the formation, expansion, and drainage of thaw lakes are widespread, up to 90% of the land area in some areas of the Arctic. Dating of features revealed that this process has been going on for the past 10,000 years, since the Earth entered the most recent interglacial warm period. However, satellite records during the past 55 years suggest that permafrost thaw in some regions is accelerating. What will happen to the climate as the rest of the permafrost thaws? When permafrost thaws, organic C is made available to microbes, which rapidly degrade it, producing greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane (CH4, 25 times the global warming potential of CO2 over 100 years). A particularly important region for greenhouse gas emissions is the Siberian Yedoma Ice Complex (10^6 km2), a Pliestocene-aged permafrost type that contains roughly half of the Arctic’s permafrost C stock. Based on patterns of yedoma degradation during the present interglacial period, estimates of the amount of C remaining in permafrost today, long term field measurements, laboratory incubation experiments, and mass balance calculations of the efficiency of CH4 production from thawed permafrost, we predict that at least 50 billion tons of CH4 (equivalent to 10 times the current atmospheric methane burden) will escape from thermokarst lakes in Siberia as yedoma thaws. More CH4 will be released from the remainder of arctic lakes. Under current projections of warming and thaw in the Arctic (7-8 deg C by 2100), thermokarst will release 0.1-0.2 billion tons CH4 yr-1 by 2100, an order of magnitude more than its current source strength, adding another 20-40% of all human and natural sources of CH4 to the atmosphere. Frozen soils which thaw under aerobic conditions will produce CO2 with projected emissions of ~0.5-1.0 billion tons C yr-1, constituting approximately 10% of modern anthropogenic emission.