EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Autumn destabilization of deep porewater CO2 store in a northern peatland driven by turbulent diffusion

A. Campeau (), D. Vachon, K. Bishop, M. B. Nilsson and M. B. Wallin
Additional contact information
A. Campeau: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
D. Vachon: Umeå University
K. Bishop: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
M. B. Nilsson: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
M. B. Wallin: Uppsala University

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract The deep porewater of northern peatlands stores large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). This store is viewed as a stable feature in the peatland CO2 cycle. Here, we report large and rapid fluctuations in deep porewater CO2 concentration recurring every autumn over four consecutive years in a boreal peatland. Estimates of the vertical diffusion of heat indicate that CO2 diffusion occurs at the turbulent rather than molecular rate. The weakening of porewater thermal stratification in autumn likely increases turbulent diffusion, thus fostering a rapid diffusion of deeper porewater CO2 towards the surface where net losses occur. This phenomenon periodically decreases the peat porewater CO2 store by between 29 and 90 g C m−2 throughout autumn, which is comparable to the peatland’s annual C-sink. Our results establish the need to consider the role of turbulent diffusion in regularly destabilizing the CO2 store in peat porewater.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27059-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-27059-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27059-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-27059-0