Sensitivity of Arctic CH4 emissions to landscape wetness diminished by atmospheric feedbacks

Philipp de Vrese (), Lutz Beckebanze, Leonardo de Aro Galera, David Holl, Thomas Kleinen, Lars Kutzbach, Zoé Rehder and Victor Brovkin
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Philipp de Vrese: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Lutz Beckebanze: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Leonardo de Aro Galera: Universität Hamburg
David Holl: Universität Hamburg
Thomas Kleinen: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Lars Kutzbach: Universität Hamburg
Zoé Rehder: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Victor Brovkin: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

Nature Climate Change, 2023, vol. 13, issue 8, 832-839

Abstract: Abstract Simulations using land surface models suggest future increases in Arctic methane emissions to be limited by the thaw-induced drying of permafrost landscapes. Here we use the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model to show that this constraint may be weaker than previously thought owing to compensatory atmospheric feedbacks. In two sets of extreme scenario simulations, a modification of the permafrost hydrology resulted in diverging hydroclimatic trajectories that, however, led to comparable methane fluxes. While a wet Arctic showed almost twice the wetland area compared with an increasingly dry Arctic, the latter featured greater substrate availability due to higher temperatures resulting from reduced evaporation, diminished cloudiness and more surface solar radiation. Given the limitations of present-day models and the potential model dependence of the atmospheric response, our results provide merely a qualitative estimation of these effects, but they suggest that atmospheric feedbacks play an important role in shaping future Arctic methane emissions.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01715-3

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