Going way back
By: Alyssa Findlay
Nature Climate Change
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth, changing the landscape. In particular, rising temperatures accelerate permafrost thaw, with implications for the vast stores of carbon currently frozen in these soils. The fate of carbon released from thawing permafrost is not clear; it could be microbially oxidized in place and release greenhouse gases, or mobilized and exported through rivers.
Xiaowen Zhang from the University of Florida and colleagues use radiocarbon records of organic carbon from a sediment core taken from the Alaskan Colville River delta to investigate permafrost carbon export from the watershed. Notably, the record spans 2,700 years, providing rich context to study the impact from recent anthropogenic climate change. They find an increase in the export of organic carbon derived from permafrost and/or deepening of mobilizable permafrost layers coincident with warming over the last 160 years. Comparisons with a previous warming period indicate that the rate of warming temperature prior to warming may play roles in determining carbon dynamics from melting permafrost.
To read more about this please follow the links below
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000396
https://eos.org/editor-highlights/a-2700-year-record-of-permafrost-thaw-sensitivity-to-climate