Earth scientist Moritz Langer will investigate the impact of greenhouse gases from rapidly thawing permafrost, as part of an international consortium, for a period of five years.
The international project PeTCaT (Rapid Permafrost Thaw Carbon Trajectories), led by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Potsdam, is investigating how carbon dioxide and methane from suddenly thawing permafrost areas can affect climate.
Rapid warming
Permafrost in the Arctic stores large amounts of organic carbon in frozen soils and deeper deposits. However, the Arctic is warming particularly rapidly, causing these deposits to thaw. The result: increasing amounts of greenhouse gases from the soil are released into the atmosphere. We do not yet have a full understanding of where and how fast permafrost thaws, and of processes driving the thaw.
The international PeTCaT project aims to close the gaps in our knowledge around rapid thawing processes. Led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, researchers from Germany, the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden will build a new dataset that will allow them to predict the possible trends and effects of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost. The project is funded by the non-profit organisation Schmidt Sciences.
Sharper predictions
The VU research team will lead the project to simulate permafrost thaw much more realistically. Current climate models often underestimate how quickly ice- and carbon-rich permafrost responds to climate change. The VU-led work package will develop and validate new modelling schemes based on field measurements, remote sensing and soil data. These models will better capture ground ice formation and associated hydrological and geomorphological thaw processes (e.g. drainage, thermokarst and erosion). Langer: "These developments will sharpen predictions about where and how fast permafrost thaw occurs, and what this means for future carbon emissions."
Researchers from six institutes are collaborating in PeTCaT: the Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany), the University of Alaska Fairbanks (US), the University of Alberta (Canada), the University of Hamburg (Germany), Stockholm University (Sweden) and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands). They combine their expertise in permafrost research, biogeochemistry of soil carbon and greenhouse gases, remote sensing, process modelling and global climate modelling.
Read more about the project on the Schmidt Sciences website.