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PERMANOR – Permafrost landscapes in transformation

In the PERMANOR project we want to get knowledge about the local-scale processes of a thewing permafrost, and how this affect the global climate system. The research is cross disclipinary between permafrost researchers and meteologists. Of particular interest is the warming potential of this so-called “permafrost-carbon feedback”. The aim is to give input to the Earth System Models (ESMs) used for climate predictions, including the Norwegian Earth System Model NorESM.

Fieldwork: Britta Sannel (second from left) and MSc students Pia Axelsson and Sofia Kjellman (Stockholm University) collecting a permafrost core from a peat plateau in Finnmark with Professor Bernd Etzelmüller. Photo: Sebastian Westermann

About the project

The research project PERMANOR – "Permafrost landscapes in transformation - from local-scale processes to the global model NorESM" aims at increasing our knowledge on the role of permafrost in the global climate system. Permafrost soils contain large amounts of organic material that is protected from microbial decomposition in the frozen ground, similar to a gigantic freezer.

In a future warmer world, thawing of permafrost is expected to occur, so that this organic material could be partially decomposed and trigger a massive release of greenhouse to the atmosphere. The additional warming potential of this so-called “permafrost-carbon feedback” is so far not well captured in Earth System Models (ESMs) used for climate predictions, including the Norwegian Earth System Model NorESM.

Objectives

The project brings together experts from the Department of Geociences, University of Oslo, the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen and the German Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research to investigate the highly dynamic evolution of permafrost landscapes in the light of ESM development. Rapid changes of permafrost landscapes are in many cases related to thawing ice-rich ground which can for instance transform dry and well-drained permafrost ground into a wetland within only a few years, as currently observed in mire areas in Northern Norway.

In PERMANOR, we will make use of extensive field observations in Norway, Svalbard and Siberia to better include such processes in NorESM climate simulations. The improved representation of permafrost landscape dynamics in NorESM will lead to reducing our uncertainty in the predictability of future climate change.

Outcomes

In autumn 2016 we conducted a joint fieldwork in Finnmark with meteorologists and climate modelers both from the University of Oslo and the Bjerknes Centre to experience the “real” permafrost landscapes which must be represented in large-scale model schemes in order to predict the magnitude of the permafrost-carbon feedback. Together with our project partner Britta Sannel from Stockholm University, we obtained cores and samples from up to 3m depth in several peat plateaus.

Thick layers of almost pure ice were documented which upon melting would lead to ground subsidence or even the formation of ponds. Not only the field datasets, but also the personal experience of the participants will in the future guide model development within the PERMANOR project.

Background

The project is cross discplinary with researchers in geography and in meteorology. Participants from two sections at the Department of Geosciences, and other research institutions.

Financing

The full name of the project are Permafrost landscapes in transformation - from local-scale processes to the global model NorESM (PERMANOR). The project is funded through the Norwegian Research Council KLIMAFORSK program, and have the NFR project number 255331.

The PERMANOR project started up i 2016 and will be finished in 2020.

Cooperation

This project is carried out in cooperation with several researchers from different institutions, see links in right column for participating researchers:

Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo
Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway
Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany
Department Natural Geography, Stockholm University

Cai, Lei; Lee, Hanna; Aas, Kjetil Schanke & Westermann, Sebastian (2020). Projecting circum-Arctic excess-ground-ice melt with a sub-grid representation in the Community Land Model. The Cryosphere. ISSN 1994-0416. 14( 12), p. 4611–4626. doi: 10.5194/tc-14-4611-2020. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
To address the long-standing underrepresentation of the influences of highly variable ground ice content on the trajectory of permafrost conditions simulated in Earth system models under a warming climate, we implement a sub-grid representation of excess ground ice within permafrost soils using the latest version of the Community Land Model (CLM5). Based on the original CLM5 tiling hierarchy, we duplicate the natural vegetated land unit by building extra tiles for up to three cryostratigraphies with different amounts of excess ice for each grid cell. For the same total amount of excess ice, introducing sub-grid variability in excess-ice contents leads to different excess-ice melting rates at the grid level. In addition, there are impacts on permafrost thermal properties and local hydrology with sub-grid representation. We evaluate this new development with single-point simulations at the Lena River delta, Siberia, where three sub-regions with distinctively different excess-ice conditions are observed. A triple-land-unit case accounting for this spatial variability conforms well to previous model studies for the Lena River delta and displays markedly different dynamics of future excess-ice thaw compared to a single-land-unit case initialized with average excess-ice contents. For global simulations, we prescribed a tiling scheme combined with our sub-grid representation to the global permafrost region using presently available circum-Arctic ground ice data. The sub-grid-scale excess ice produces significant melting of excess ice under a warming climate and enhances the representation of sub-grid variability of surface subsidence on a global scale. Our model development makes it possible to portray more details on the permafrost degradation trajectory depending on the sub-grid soil thermal regime and excess-ice melting, which also shows a strong indication that accounting for excess ice is a prerequisite of a reasonable projection of permafrost thaw. The modeled permafrost degradation with sub-grid excess ice follows the pathway that continuous permafrost transforms into discontinuous permafrost before it disappears, including surface subsidence and talik formation, which are highly permafrost-relevant landscape changes excluded from most land models. Our development of sub-grid representation of excess ice demonstrates a way forward to improve the realism of excess-ice melt in global land models, but further developments require substantially improved global observational datasets on both the horizontal and vertical distributions of excess ground ice.
Aas, Kjetil Schanke; Martin, Leo Celestin Paul; Nitzbon, Jan; Langer, Moritz; Boike, Julia & Lee, Hanna [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2019). Thaw processes in ice-rich permafrost landscapes represented with laterally coupled tiles in a land surface model. The Cryosphere. ISSN 1994-0416. 13(2), p. 591–609. doi: 10.5194/tc-13-591-2019. Full text in Research Archive
Ekici, Altug; Lee, Hanna; Lawrence, David M.; Swenson, Sean C. & Prigent, Catherine (2019). Ground subsidence effects on simulating dynamic high-latitude surface inundation under permafrost thaw using CLM5. Geoscientific Model Development. ISSN 1991-959X. 12(12), p. 5291–5300. doi: 10.5194/gmd-12-5291-2019.
Martin, Leo Celestin Paul; Nitzbon, Jan; Aas, Kjetil Schanke; Etzelmüller, Bernd; Kristiansen, Håvard & Westermann, Sebastian (2019). Stability Conditions of Peat Plateaus and Palsas in Northern Norway. Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR): Earth Surface. ISSN 2169-9003. 124(3), p. 705–719. doi: 10.1029/2018JF004945. Full text in Research Archive
Kjellman, Sofia E.; Axelsson, Pia E.; Etzelmüller, Bernd; Westermann, Sebastian & Sannel, A. Britta K. (2018). Holocene development of subarctic permafrost peatlands in Finnmark, northern Norway. The Holocene. ISSN 0959-6836. 28(12), p. 1855–1869. doi: 10.1177/0959683618798126. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Subarctic permafrost peatlands are important soil organic carbon pools, and improved knowledge about peat properties and peatland sensitivity to past climate change is essential when predicting future response to a warmer climate and associated feedback mechanisms. In this study, Holocene peatland development and permafrost dynamics of four subarctic peat plateaus in Finnmark, northern Norway have been investigated through detailed analyses of plant macrofossils and geochemical properties. Peatland inception occurred around 9800 cal. yr BP and 9200 cal. yr BP at the two continental sites Suossjavri and Iskoras. Younger basal peat ages were found at the two coastal locations Lakselv and Karlebotn, at least partly caused by the time lag between deglaciation and emergence of land by isostatic uplift. Here, peatland development started around 6150 cal. yr BP and 5150 cal. yr BP, respectively. All four peatlands developed as wet fens throughout most of the Holocene. Permafrost aggradation, causing frost heave and a shift in the vegetation assemblage from wet fen to dry bog species, probably did not occur until during the last millennium, ca. 950 cal. yr BP in Karlebotn and ca. 800 cal. yr BP in Iskoras, and before ca. 150 cal. yr BP in Lakselv and ca. 100 cal. yr BP in Suossjavri. In Karlebotn, there are indications of a possible earlier permafrost phase around 2200 cal. yr BP due to climatic cooling at the late Subboreal to early Subatlantic transition. The mean long-term Holocene carbon accumulation rate at all four sites was 12.3 +/- 4.1 gC m-2 yr-1 (+/- SD) and the mean soil organic carbon storage was 97 +/- 46 kgC m-2.
Aas, Kjetil Schanke; Gisnås, Kjersti; Westermann, Sebastian & Berntsen, Terje Koren (2017). A Tiling Approach to Represent Subgrid Snow Variability in Coupled Land Surface–Atmosphere Models. Journal of Hydrometeorology. ISSN 1525-755X. 18(1), p. 49–63. doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-16-0026.1. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in Cristin

Cai, Lei; Lee, Hanna; Westermann, Sebastian & Aas, Kjetil Schanke (2019). Development of the subgrid excess ground ice framework in the Community Land Model.
Lee, Hanna & Ekici, Altug (2018). Dynamic wetlands parameterization under permafrost thaw in CLM5.
Ekici, Altug; Lee, Hanna; Lawrence, David M. & Swenson, Sean C. (2018). Coupling ground subsidence and surface wetlands.
Lee, Hanna; Ekici, Altug; Robson, Benjamin Aubrey; Fan, Yuanchao; Westermann, Sebastian & Langer, Moritz (2018). Vulnerability of permafrost thaw and the emerging risks for the Arctic infrastructure.
Lee, Hanna; Christiansen, Casper Tai & Westermann, Sebastian (2017). Advancing permafrost carbon climate feedback – improvements and evaluations of the Norwegian Earth System Model with observations (FEEDBACK).
Aas, Kjetil Schanke; Westermann, Sebastian; Martin, Leo Celestin Paul & Berntsen, Terje Koren (2017). Degrading Palsa Mires in Northern Norway Simulated with a Regional Climate Model with a Subgrid Snow Scheme.
Fan, Yuanchao; Lee, Hanna & Ekici, Altug (2017). Modeling biophysical and biogeochemical processes in vulnerable ecosystems under global climate change: thawing permafrost landscapes in the Arctic.
Lee, Hanna (2017). Representing the Terrestrial Role in the Climate System.
Lee, Hanna & Ekici, Altug (2017). PERMANOR project progress in the CLM.
Lee, Hanna & Christiansen, Casper Tai (2017). FEEDBACK project progress.
Lee, Hanna; Ekici, Altug & Christiansen, Casper Tai (2017). Advancing permafrost carbon climate feedback – improvements and evaluations of the Norwegian Earth System Model with observations.
Christiansen, Casper Tai & Lee, Hanna (2017). Advancing permafrost carbon climate feedback – improvements and evaluations of the Norwegian Earth System Model with observations .
Lee, Hanna & Christiansen, Casper Tai (2016). Advancing permafrost carbon climate feedback - improvements and evaluation of the Norwegian Earth System Model with observations.