Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Potential carbon emissions dominated by carbon dioxide from thawed permafrost soils

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 950–953 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Increasing temperatures in northern high latitudes are causing permafrost to thaw1, making large amounts of previously frozen organic matter vulnerable to microbial decomposition2. Permafrost thaw also creates a fragmented landscape of drier and wetter soil conditions3,4 that determine the amount and form (carbon dioxide (CO2), or methane (CH4)) of carbon (C) released to the atmosphere. The rate and form of C release control the magnitude of the permafrost C feedback, so their relative contribution with a warming climate remains unclear5,6. We quantified the effect of increasing temperature and changes from aerobic to anaerobic soil conditions using 25 soil incubation studies from the permafrost zone. Here we show, using two separate meta-analyses, that a 10 °C increase in incubation temperature increased C release by a factor of 2.0 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.8 to 2.2). Under aerobic incubation conditions, soils released 3.4 (95% CI, 2.2 to 5.2) times more C than under anaerobic conditions. Even when accounting for the higher heat trapping capacity of CH4, soils released 2.3 (95% CI, 1.5 to 3.4) times more C under aerobic conditions. These results imply that permafrost ecosystems thawing under aerobic conditions and releasing CO2 will strengthen the permafrost C feedback more than waterlogged systems releasing CO2 and CH4 for a given amount of C.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Ratio of C release with a 10 °C increase in incubation temperature.
Figure 2: Ratio of C release from permafrost-affected soils comparing aerobic to anaerobic incubation conditions.
Figure 3: Contribution of CH4-C to total anaerobic C release for boreal forest, peatland and tundra ecosystems.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Brown, J. & Romanovsky, V. E. Report from the International Permafrost Association: state of permafrost in the first decade of the 21st century. Permafrost Periglacial Process. 19, 255–260 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Harden, J. W. et al. Field information links permafrost carbon to physical vulnerabilities of thawing. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L15704 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Jorgenson, M. T. et al. Reorganization of vegetation, hydrology and soil carbon after permafrost degradation across heterogeneous boreal landscapes. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 035017 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Johnson, K. D. et al. Permafrost and organic layer interactions over a climate gradient in a discontinuous permafrost zone. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 035028 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Schuur, E. A. G. et al. Vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change: implications for the global carbon cycle. Bioscience 58, 701–714 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Schuur, E. A. G. et al. Climate change and the permafrost carbon feedback. Nature 520, 171–179 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Hugelius, G. et al. Estimated stocks of circumpolar permafrost carbon with quantified uncertainty ranges and identified data gaps. Biogeosciences 11, 6573–6593 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Tarnocai, C. et al. Soil organic carbon pools in the northern circumpolar permafrost region. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 23, Gb2023 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. IPCC in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

  10. Dutta, K., Schuur, E. A. G., Neff, J. C. & Zimov, S. A. Potential carbon release from permafrost soils of Northeastern Siberia. Glob. Change Biol. 12, 2336–2351 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Jorgenson, M. T., Shur, Y. L. & Pullman, E. R. Abrupt increase in permafrost degradation in Arctic Alaska. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L02503 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Schädel, C. et al. Circumpolar assessment of permafrost C quality and its vulnerability over time using long-term incubation data. Glob. Change Biol. 20, 641–652 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Schmidt, M. W. I. et al. Persistence of soil organic matter as an ecosystem property. Nature 478, 49–56 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Myhre, G. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) 659–740 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hamdi, S., Moyano, F., Sall, S., Bernoux, M. & Chevallier, T. Synthesis analysis of the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration from laboratory studies in relation to incubation methods and soil conditions. Soil Biol. Biochem. 58, 115–126 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Yvon-Durocher, G. et al. Methane fluxes show consistent temperature dependence across microbial to ecosystem scales. Nature 507, 488–491 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. McCalley, C. K. et al. Methane dynamics regulated by microbial community response to permafrost thaw. Nature 514, 478–481 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Olefeldt, D., Turetsky, M. R., Crill, P. M. & McGuire, A. D. Environmental and physical controls on northern terrestrial methane emissions across permafrost zones. Glob. Change Biol. 19, 589–603 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Prater, J. L., Chanton, J. P. & Whiting, G. J. Variation in methane production pathways associated with permafrost decomposition in collapse scar bogs of Alberta, Canada. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 21, GB4004 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Treat, C. C. et al. A pan-Arctic synthesis of CH4 and CO2 production from anoxic soil incubations. Glob. Change Biol. 21, 2787–2803 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Collins, M. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) 1029–1136 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Luo, Y. Q., Wan, S. Q., Hui, D. F. & Wallace, L. L. Acclimatization of soil respiration to warming in a tall grass prairie. Nature 413, 622–625 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Sistla, S. A. et al. Long-term warming restructures Arctic tundra without changing net soil carbon storage. Nature 497, 615–618 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Natali, S. M., Schuur, E. A. G., Webb, E. E., Pries, C. E. H. & Crummer, K. G. Permafrost degradation stimulates carbon loss from experimentally warmed tundra. Ecology 95, 602–608 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Koven, C. D. Boreal carbon loss due to poleward shift in low-carbon ecosystems. Nature Geosci. 6, 452–456 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Hartley, I. P. et al. A potential loss of carbon associated with greater plant growth in the European Arctic. Nature Clim. Change 2, 875–879 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Avis, C. A., Weaver, A. J. & Meissner, K. J. Reduction in areal extent of high-latitude wetlands in response to permafrost thaw. Nature Geosci. 4, 444–448 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Slater, A. G. & Lawrence, D. M. Diagnosing present and future permafrost from climate models. J. Clim. 26, 5608–5623 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Smith, L. C., Sheng, Y., MacDonald, G. M. & Hinzman, L. D. Disappearing arctic lakes. Science 308, 1429 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Andresen, C. G. & Lougheed, V. L. Disappearing Arctic tundra ponds: fine-scale analysis of surface hydrology in drained thaw lake basins over a 65 year period (1948–2013). J. Geophys. Res. 120, 2014JG002778 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Hedges, L. V., Gurevitch, J. & Curtis, P. S. The meta-analysis of response ratios in experimental ecology. Ecology 80, 1150–1156 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Konstantopoulos, S. Fixed effects and variance components estimation in three-level meta-analysis. Res. Synth. Methods 2, 61–76 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Viechtbauer, W. Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. J. Stat. Softw. 36, 1–48 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  34. Calcagno, V. & de Mazancourt, C. glmulti: model selection and multimodel inference made easy. R package version 1.0.7 (2013); http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=glmulti

  35. Burnham, K. P. & Anderson, D. R. Model Selection and Multimodel Interference (Springer, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  36. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2012).

  37. Kane, E. S. et al. Response of anaerobic carbon cycling to water table manipulation in an Alaskan rich fen. Soil Biol. Biochem. 58, 50–60 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank B. Robinson for assistance with meta-data extraction and J. Barta and I. Kohoutova for help with generating incubation data. Financial support was provided by the National Science Foundation Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon Research Coordination Network Grant no. 955713 with continued support from the National Science Foundation Research Synthesis, and Knowledge Transfer in a Changing Arctic: Science Support for the Study of Environmental Arctic Change Grant no. 1331083. Author contributions were also supported by grants to individuals: Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Terrestrial Ecosystem Science (TES) Program (DE-SC0006982) to E.A.G.S.; UK Natural Environment Research Council funding to I.P.H. and C.E.-A. (NE/K000179/1); German Research Foundation (DFG, Excellence cluster CliSAP) to C.K.; Department of Ecosystem Biology, Grant agency of South Bohemian University, GAJU project no. 146/2013/P and GAJU project no. 146/2013/D to H.S.; National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (1312402) to S.M.N.; National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology (0423385) and National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology (1026843), both to the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts; additionally, the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments in the Arctic (NGEE Arctic) project is supported by the Biological and Environmental Research programme in the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the DOE under Contract no. DE-AC05-00OR22725. Support for C.B. came from European Union (FP-7-ENV-2011, project PAGE21, contract no. 282700), Academy of Finland (project CryoN, decision no. 132 045), Academy of Finland (project COUP, decision no. 291691; part of the European Union Joint Programming Initiative, JPI Climate), strategic funding of the University of Eastern Finland (project FiWER) and Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation and for P.J.M. from Nordic Center of Excellence (project DeFROST).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011, USA

    Christina Schädel & Edward A. G. Schuur

  2. New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Rotorua 3046, New Zealand

    Martin K.-F. Bader

  3. Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, 70211 Kuopio, Finland

    Christina Biasi & Pertti J. Martikainen

  4. Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA

    Rosvel Bracho

  5. School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA

    Rosvel Bracho

  6. University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Science, České Budĕjovice 37005, Czech Republic

    Petr Čapek, Kateřina Diáková & Hana Šantrůčková

  7. Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK

    Sarah De Baets, Cristian Estop-Aragones & Iain P. Hartley

  8. CSIRO Agriculture, Urrbrae 5064, Australia

    Jessica Ernakovich

  9. Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H1, Canada

    Cristian Estop-Aragones

  10. Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830, USA

    David E. Graham & Taniya Roy Chowdhury

  11. Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

    Colleen M. Iversen, Richard J. Norby & Victoria L. Sloan

  12. School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan 39931, USA

    Evan Kane

  13. Institute of Soil Science, Universität Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

    Christian Knoblauch

  14. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119077, Singapore

    Massimo Lupascu

  15. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540, USA

    Susan M. Natali

  16. Arctic Network, National Park Service, Anchorage, Alaska 99501, USA

    Jonathan A. O’Donnell

  17. The Ecosystem Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA

    Gaius Shaver

  18. Institute of Northern Engineering, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA

    Claire C. Treat

  19. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada

    Merritt R. Turetsky

  20. US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA

    Mark P. Waldrop

  21. US Geological Survey, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA

    Kimberly P. Wickland

Authors
  1. Christina Schädel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Martin K.-F. Bader
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Edward A. G. Schuur
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  4. Christina Biasi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  5. Rosvel Bracho
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  6. Petr ÄŒapek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  7. Sarah De Baets
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  8. Kateřina Diáková
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  9. Jessica Ernakovich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  10. Cristian Estop-Aragones
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  11. David E. Graham
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  12. Iain P. Hartley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  13. Colleen M. Iversen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  14. Evan Kane
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  15. Christian Knoblauch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  16. Massimo Lupascu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  17. Pertti J. Martikainen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  18. Susan M. Natali
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  19. Richard J. Norby
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  20. Jonathan A. O’Donnell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  21. Taniya Roy Chowdhury
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  22. Hana Šantrůčková
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  23. Gaius Shaver
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  24. Victoria L. Sloan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  25. Claire C. Treat
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  26. Merritt R. Turetsky
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  27. Mark P. Waldrop
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  28. Kimberly P. Wickland
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

C.S. designed the study together with E.A.G.S.; C.S. compiled the database and extracted data from the literature with help from M.L. and S.M.N. M.K.-F.B. and C.S. performed the analysis. C.S. wrote the manuscript. All other authors either contributed data and provided input to the manuscript, or performed essential tasks in the field and laboratory for the included data sets.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina Schädel.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 1473 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Schädel, C., Bader, MF., Schuur, E. et al. Potential carbon emissions dominated by carbon dioxide from thawed permafrost soils. Nature Clim Change 6, 950–953 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3054

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3054

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing