Journal article
Estimating the near-surface permafrost-carbon feedback on global warming
T Schneider Von Deimling, M Meinshausen, A Levermann, V Huber, K Frieler, DM Lawrence, V Brovkin
Biogeosciences | COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH | Published : 2012
Open access
Abstract
Thawing of permafrost and the associated release of carbon constitutes a positive feedback in the climate system, elevating the effect of anthropogenic GHG emissions on global-mean temperatures. Multiple factors have hindered the quantification of this feedback, which was not included in climate carbon-cycle models which participated in recent model intercomparisons (such as the Coupled Carbon Cycle Climate Model Intercomparison Project - C4MIP). There are considerable uncertainties in the rate and extent of permafrost thaw, the hydrological and vegetation response to permafrost thaw, the decomposition timescales of freshly thawed organic material, the proportion of soil carbon that might be..
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Awarded by Federal Environment Agency for Germany (UBA)
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank our colleagues whose input was crucial for building our simplified permafrost module. Our special thank is to Vladimir Romanovsky and Alexey Eliseev for discussing physics of permafrost soil thaw, to Charles Tarnocai for discussions about soil carbon characteristics, and to Sybill Schaphoff and Ursula Heyder for their input about dynamic carbon and vegetation modeling. Malte Meinshausen and Katja Frieler were supported by the Federal Environment Agency for Germany (UBA) under project UFOPLAN FKZ 370841103.