University of Leeds
Embargo: 14 March 2022 at 16:00 (London time), 14 March 2022 at 12:00 (US Eastern Time).
Permafrost peatlands approaching tipping point
Researchers warn that permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia are much closer to a climatic tipping point than previous believed.
The frozen peatlands in these areas store up to 39 billion tons of carbon – the equivalent to twice that stored in the whole of European forests.
A new study, led by the University of Leeds, used the latest generation of climate models to examine possible future climates of these regions and the likely impact on their permafrost peatlands.
The projections indicate that even with the strongest efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, and therefore limit global warming, by 2040 the climates of Northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost.
However, strong action to reduce emissions could help preserve suitable climates for permafrost peatlands in northern parts of Western Siberia, a landscape containing 13.9 billion tonnes of peat carbon.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, emphasises the importance of socio-economic policies aimed at reducing emissions and mitigating climate change and their role in determining the rate and extent of permafrost peatland thaw.
Study lead author, Richard Fewster is a PhD researcher in the School of Geography at Leeds. He said: “We examined a range of future emission trajectories. This included strong climate-change mitigation scenario, which would see large-scale efforts to curb emissions across sectors, to no-mitigations scenarios and worse-case scenarios.
“Our modelling shows that these fragile ecosystems are on a precipice and even moderate mitigation leads to the widespread loss of suitable climates for peat permafrost by the end of the century.
“But that doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel. The rate and extent to which suitable climate are lost could be limited, and even partially reversed, by strong climate-change mitigation policies.”
Study co-author Dr Paul Morris, Associate Professor of Biogeoscience at Leeds, Said: “Huge stocks of peat carbon have been protected for millennia by frozen conditions but once those conditions become unsuitable all that stored carbon can be lost very quickly.
“The magnitude of twenty-first century climate change is likely to overwhelm any protection the insulating properties of peat soils could provide.”
The large quantities of carbon stored in peatland permafrost soils are particularly threatened by rapid twenty-first-century climate change. When permafrost thaws the organic matter starts to decompose, releasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which increase global temperatures and potentially accelerate global climate change.
Study co-author Dr Ruza Ivanovic, Associate Professor in Climatology at Leeds said: “Peatland permafrost responds differently to changing climates than mineral-soil permafrost due to the insulating properties of organic soils, but peatlands remain poorly represented in Earth system models.
“It is vitally important these ecosystems are understood and accounted for when considering the impact of climate change on the planet.”
Study co-author Dr Chris Smith, from the School of Earth and Environment, said: “More work is needed to further understanding of these fragile ecosystems.
“Remote sensing and field campaigns can help improve maps of modern peat permafrost distribution in regions where observation data is lacking. This would enable future modelling studies to make hemispheric-scale projections.”
Further information:
The paper “Imminent loss of climate space for permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia” is published in Nature Climate Change 14 March 2022 (DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01296-7)
A research briefing on the paper by the study authors is also available on request.
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JOURNAL
Nature Climate Change
DOI
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Computational simulation/modeling
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Imminent loss of climate space for permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
14-Mar-2022
If these tipping points actually existed, why didn’t they occur during the Holocene Climate Optimum?
Nice question.
Or the Medieval Warm period, or the Roman Warm period, or the Minoan Warm period. . .
Cancelled.
That is what I came on here to type. Holocene Climate Optimum, Minoan warm period and Roman warm period all likely melted the permafrost. Why didn’t it keep heating up because of that?
It was warmer 1700 years ago https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1580472/archaeology-news-melting-glacier-weapons-reindeer-hunters-norway
“ Many key archaeological sites are being uncovered as glaciers gradually melt from global warming.
Mr Pilo and his team have explored the mountains in an effort to discover more hidden treasures uncovered by the melting ice.”
No doubt the CO2 was thick back in those days…those hunters could barely see the reindeer through the CO2.
Because this time, it’s different!
Exactly. It is just like I told you….
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/03/08/who-or-what-turned-up-the-heat/
But usually the extra heat from earth does not last for very long…
What isn’t different is the usual panhandling: “More work is needed to further understanding of these fragile ecosystems.”
Field trips to Siberia are likely to be off the table for a while. They’ll have to make do with more modelling.
“If these tipping points actually existed, why didn’t they occur during the Holocene Climate Optimum?”
Like when this guy was growing?
Fake news.
Who says they didn’t? Maybe they occur daily .. 🙂
This is the exact same question that I was going to ask.
Because the models “predict” that global warming will be much hotter than any of these periods. Climate models again.
A more interesting question is: how many men does it take to tip a peat bog over?.
So the lichens, heather, and scrub plants that grew when it was warmer, then got frozen in the ground when it got colder, are going to melt cuz it’s warmer again, but not going to grow this time. What steaming pile of fear-mongering.
Yeah, I guess the tree-line never moves north any more?
Exactly!! I jumped right to the comments after this: “used the latest generation of climate models to examine possible future climates”
Have they actually gone into the peat fields and measured the amount of CO2 that is coming out of them?
Peat is a beneficial fuel for kilning malt to make whiskey, whisky. We can take care of many problems doing so.
I guess I’ll just have to help save the world one sip at a time of
Bailey’s Irish Cream. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it!!!
Perhaps this evening at the Flagstaff house for a nice Talisker!
Hey Paul, I got your message from Charles. Anyway, I prefer to remain as anonymous as I can for the time being as I work in the belly of the beast.
It would be nice to meet you at the Flagstaff House some day. I met Tony Heller once and showed him my lab.
Cheers to a future rendezvous at the coffee shop or brew pub!
Of course not.
“…the latest generation of climate models to examine possible future climates of these regions…”
All possible future climates?
It can be done. Buying a few more supercomputers and recruiting some more programmers to write the models.
How many programmers does it take to write a simple program?
10 PRINT “It’s worse than we thought”
20 GOTO 10
Ooh, that reveals my age.
Be careful, Paul! Data collecting may damage your health!…
We should be happy if all that stored carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere. We WUWT readers know we need more of it – unlike the uneducated alarmists!
Don’t be stupid, that is not science. I mean who does boring stuff like direct observations and measurements, that’s so last century!
Why you don’t need to leave your desk at all. Your computer is there, with models that have had their free parameters input by people whose careers would be ruined if their prognostications don’t materialise.
Alan, it appears that you do need to leave your desk. For extended periods! Not, to be sure, for field work. As you note, that’s what 17th and 18th century researchers did, not modern at all. Rather, to directly interact with colleagues at symposia, conferences, seminars, and similar functions. Held in salubrious locations far from the distractions of the workaday academic grind. You know, Bali, Sharm-el-Sheikh, Nuku’alofa, Agra, … A few weeks a quarter to keep the mental gears spinning.
Doubtful. One of the first things I think the “Climate Catastrophe” needed was a place where “the worst of it” would happen, that is difficult to go see for yourself. Too many people live around the equator, so that was out. “Wait! The Poles! Nobody lives there, you can’t even get a flight to them!” “Perfect!”
Off topic. There seem to be across the board adjustments to the USCRN temps just released for Feb. going right back to 2005….Am I right, and if so anyone know why?
Maybe you selected a certain month instead of all months. It looks the same to me. The whole purpose of USCRN is that the numbers don’t/won’t need to be adjusted.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2021&month=12
Its definitely been altered.. I had the previous values to end of 2021 in a spreadsheet. Subtracted the new values
see graph of changes, below
new, red v old, blue
Conjecture.. They found that one of their sites had been compromised and removed it from the whole series ?
Perhaps someone in the know can chase this down and find out.
The fact that it has very minimal effect on the trend indicates its probably not an “AGW agenda” driven adjustment.
Can you elaborate on changes to USCRN?
I thought this was pristine and un-adjusted.
Anthony, if this is true, BIG NEWS !!!!
This is what I get when I subtract the new values from the ones I had up to the end of 2021.
Reasoning would be interesting !
Wow.. first pic, and its fuzzy.. but ok if you click on it.
It’s a milankovich adjustment.
That’s Albert milankovich, a junior professor at east angora BTW
Yes, they seen to have altered the whole lot.downwards slightly
This has actually reduced the small trend (coming from the 2015/16 El Nino bulge) very slightly.
Well, they have probably moved to the new 30 averages…..but the gradient seems to have changed.
According to my calcs, gradient to end of 2021 has changed from 0.0746º/year to 0.0724º/year
Got to go to work now, will continue looking at this later.
I’m not a statistician….but an Excell linear trend line on my numbers shows a drop from 0.0694 to 0.0624/year…about 10%.
‘Using the latest generation of climate models’. That would be CMIP6, whose average ECS is now 4.4, up from 3.4 in CMIP5 and about 1.7 using EBM methods. The 3.4 to I.7 AR5 problem led IPCC to assign no central estimate. That model/observation problem is worse in AR6. Andy May’s recent post showed CMIP6 also made the tropical troposphere hotspot problem worse.
So of course the imaginary tundra peat lands tipping point is now also worse.
Remember: Anything can happen in a video game.
Ho hum. Another “it’s worse than we thought” proclamation getting press because everybody knows we’re not scared enough to take action. I wonder how nature and the world managed to survive all these “tipping points” in the past?
They are probably using RCP8.5 in their estimates
You are correct!
Executive summary: Strong action (reverting to Medieval levels of quality of life, mass starvation and death from just about every other thing) is required to avoid the ground getting soggy in some remote foreign place with few inhabitants, that’s also under sanctions that are intentionally hurting them.
Some how I am underwelmed…
I wonder how many tipping points the permafrost has already gone through without any issue just in the last 10000 years …the Holocene, Minoan, Roman, Medieval optima having been warmer than the today’s Modern optimum.
Uuuhhh?
When I saw “climate models” I knew it was bull spit.
Well, if it is a real ‘tipping point,’ then we don’t have to worry about it ever becoming frozen again. Canada should start investing in a long-range plan of converting the permafrost areas to agricultural land. The crops will also convert much of the CO2 evolved into edible food. We should be glad that it is a ‘tipping point.’ Investors are much more comfortable investing in a sure thing, rather than something that could, might, or possibly happen.
Gosh, Canada might get as warm as the American midwest. How would they ever cope?
Nine months of shorts and t-shirts. It’ll be alright.
😉
I can’t do that in Mesa Arizona, don’t think that coming to Canada anytime soon. Although my Canadian neighbors who are winter visitors do wander around in shorts most of the winter. Of course they don’t spend a summer in 42 C average highs in July and August either.
It is what one gets used to. When I lived in the SF Bay Area, I used to put a heavy coat on when it got into the low-50s. Mark Twain complained that the coldest Winter he ever experienced was a Summer in San Francisco.
Yesterday it was in the 50s in SW Ohio, and I saw a young man wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, and his girlfriend was wearing jeans with the knees ripped out in some sort of unfathomable fashion statement.
At least it wouldn’t be as crowded in Florida every winter.
They would turn into wetlands and be off limits. Wetland for the sake of wetland.
No doubt the climate reporters will get a free pass. Not so much the war reality reporters.
Garbage in = Garbage out. If you accidentally stepped on that study you would have to scrape it off your shoe.
People who worry about climate tipping points should take climate action immediately by removing themselves from the gene pool.
It’s really the only solution to saving the earth. Either you want to save the earth or you are just lying to yourself by hanging around.
Oh the embarrassment, yet more junk from my old school at Leeds. sigh
Maybe not quite the Gene Pool – just remove themselves from Science and Education.
Really really seriously because the junk they’re promulgating here is such an epic misunderstanding of what’s really going on out there.
This sort of garbage will lead the whole lot of us to ‘leave the gene pool‘
I visited the ‘geography school’ link and saw where they’re talking about Amazon trees being killed by climate (strong winds and drought)
But only the trees on the edge of the (remaining) bits of forest – oblivious to how a rainforest works.
That it creates its own rain and needs a complete intact canopy to do that and ‘function in general’
But they’re not the only ones making that mistake – the most notable peeps being those in California who imagine there is such a thing as protective burning. That burning holes in a nutrient deficient forest will stop it burning.
Could not be more wrong. It will only burn faster.
Look out Seattle, it’ll be your turn to burn soon
Peta wrote: “Maybe not quite the Gene Pool – just remove themselves from Science and Education. Really really seriously because the junk they’re promulgating here is such an epic misunderstanding of what’s really going on out there.
This sort of garbage will lead the whole lot of us to ‘leave the gene pool‘”
–
–
They could always just glue themselves to the road and let nature take its course.
😉
Hi Peta,
I beg leave to disagree on the CA front. Our arid climate forests need those little fires to avoid becoming nutrient deficient. If small fires do not clear out the dead dry brush before too much accumulates, then huge giant wildfires will, along with the large mature trees and riverine flora which would otherwise survive and hold the soil and all the nutrient rich ash in place. Timber harvesting can, if done selectively, substitute for fire. (clear brush, cut immature trees in clumps, harvest mature trees singly or in small groups, chip and mulch most of the debris and leave in situ)
If you can’t effectively emulate fire, then you need the real thing (in small doses). Many of our plants don’t effectively reproduce without it.
Spacing out the fuel is an effective method of preventing large fires. Your forest may be so full of fuel that it can’t be done, but much of California is not that wet. Looking out over a creosote covered landscape you will note that each bush sits alone. The empty spaces between are a battlefield, the prize is water.
And it’s worse than we previously thought……
That’s the way “settled scientism™” works.
I am always tempted to ask them how they manage to qualify “worse”. Is this a universal “worse”, and if so, what has been the “optimum”? When they say “worse” does this mean that there is no benefit whatsoever? Or is “worse” only within the narrow confines of the Malthusian narrative?
The explanation you’d get to all that is worse than you thought, AWG.
The two constants of climate change: The Science Is Settled and It’s Worse Than We Thought.
“But that doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel.”
Yes it does. Wave the white flag and give up. You lost. End all your useless and stupid “mitigations.” Let the permafrost melt. You can’t stop it from melting — by your own admission — and frankly, so what? Permafrost is also useless and stupid.
Frankly, if these quacks want to keep their cushy sinecures, they should study about how to warm the planet. Warmer Is Better. Let’s go that direction.
permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia are much closer to a climatic tipping point than previous believed
And what “tipping point” would that be? The same one they reached in prior interglacial (warm) periods where peatlands disappeared from Earth forever? Oh, wait, they came back. You mean the “tipping point” where their release of methane and carbon dioxide (“carbon”) destroyed the planet and made it a burning hell inhospitable for all life? Oh, it didn’t happen? Or the “tipping point” where millions of square miles of inhospitable tundra become available for agriculture and development?
Then what exactly is this “tipping point” of which you fondly speak and why should we care?
It’s worse than we thought! Send money and maybe we can fix it, needs more study.
We just need a good spray-on coating for the peat that will keep the CO2 sealed safely inside.
This line: “Huge stocks of peat carbon have been protected for millennia by frozen conditions but once those conditions become unsuitable all that stored carbon can be lost very quickly” is just not credible. ALL that stored carbon lost?
Consider that there is a lot of peatland forest and bog below the permafrost latitudes with very large accumulations of carbon – organic soils several meters thick or more that thaw each summer. Why have these areas not already lost all their carbon?
Certainly a soil that is unfrozen for extended periods will have more opportunity for decomposition and loss of carbon, but it will not “all…be lost very quickly”. I accept that there could be a net loss of carbon for an extended period after melting, but there will be considerable carbon left in place, including new inputs from increased growth of plants, bryophytes, etc.
Are they suggesting we will have tropical jungle level nutrient cycling in boreal zones at the flip of a switch? Where do they think the carbon will all go?
Clearly, the bog grew before it froze. Why do we assume the bog will not grow again if it thaws. Mayhap we should fear that the CO2 sink these peaty places will become will draw down CO2 levels?
What is their error band for the predictions?
+/-∞
That narrows it down, Owen. 👍👍
😉
How would they know? They only model for the prediction, no real world measurement to check against the model is needed(at least to them!)
End of abstract– “ Strong action to reduce emissions (SSP1-2.6) by the 2090s could retain suitable climates for permafrost peatlands storing 13.9 Gt carbon in northernmost Western Siberia, indicating that socio-economic policies will determine the rate and extent of permafrost peatland thaw.”
I was at a meeting with five others last week on an estuarine question. When asked what I would recommend I explained, in a little more detail, the difference between assessment (science) and management (application). While I had a lot to say about the subject including questions that might be important for applying, it was well accepted, even perhaps new to some of their experience. Appeal to authority (logical error) is way too common, legal profession asks for opinions which might lead one into it. One came up afterwards complimentary, just told him that it is what I was taught, no reason to change.
All too often we skip straight to “What shall we do?” skipping over the perequsite questions of “Should we do something?” and “Can we do something effective?”
The two most dangerous and expensive words in politics are; “must” and “now.”
The very existence of those peatlands debunks the claims it warmer than ever and unrepresented , it means it was warmer for a long time in the past since it is vegetation remains that froze over. Why the skeptics don’t keep pointing the obvious ?
Here is the abstract…
– – – – – – – – –
Imminent loss of climate space for permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia
Human-induced climate warming by 2100 is expected to thaw large expanses of northern permafrost peatlands. However, the spatio-temporal dynamics of permafrost peatland thaw remain uncertain due to complex permafrost–climate interactions, the insulating properties of peat soils and variation in model projections of future climate. Here we show that permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia will soon surpass a climatic tipping point under scenarios of moderate-to-high warming (Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5). The total peatland area affected under these scenarios contains 37.0–39.5 Gt carbon (equivalent to twice the amount of carbon stored in European forests). Our bioclimatic models indicate that all of Fennoscandia will become climatically unsuitable for peatland permafrost by 2040. Strong action to reduce emissions (SSP1-2.6) by the 2090s could retain suitable climates for permafrost peatlands storing 13.9 Gt carbon in northernmost Western Siberia, indicating that socio-economic policies will determine the rate and extent of permafrost peatland thaw.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01296-7
Why Is the World Ignoring the Latest U.N. Climate Report?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/un-climate-report.html
Gee I wonder why? /S
The journalists characterisation of the events in Australia is grossly distorted pathetic nonsense.
It’s no wonder the media and journalists in particular have very little credibility.
Oh noes! The permafrost is melting, the permafrost is melting! What a world, what a world! We’re off to see the wizard.
If the permafrost goes away wouldn’t that allow forests to grow and, you know, sequester more CO2 from the atmosphere. Seems like that would open up a whole lot of “carbon credits”. 😃
We don’t deserve God’s/Nature’s goodness.
As evil men do all that they can to destroy manufactured fertilizers and implement other policies aimed at bringing about global famine, along comes a CO2 producing mechanism that counteracts, to some degree these nefarious and misguided efforts.
More CO2 being released means natural fertilizer and reduced demands for water.
After all the many ‘tipping points’, it all just tips back again and life goes on as usual.
Permafrost used to be in Iowa during the last Glaciation phase how come no CH4 explosion in the last 20.000 years?
So, 39 Gt of carbon effluvia. That’s just a little more that one year’s worth of global emissions, which seem to add about 2ppm/yr, if you believe that sort of thing. So you get a huge bump of…2ppm. Maybe. I assume it isn’t all going to outgas in one global CO2 fart. Not to mention that other studies mentioned here indicate that microbes are pretty good at digesting all that organic matter and converting via the food chain to other forms.
Errr.. how did all that peat get there in the first place?
Well, it can’t have grown there. It must have been pre-historic mammoths, recognising the danger, that transported all the peat northwards and buried it under the ice. Some of them died in the effort, which is why some of their perfectly preserved carcasses can be found there. Or something.
“I am 63, I have had my fun with the Earth” – Bill Maher
Why do Leeds’ professors and researchers write such absurd claims regarding preferred alarmist dooms? Your professors and researchers remind me of a young child yelling “wolf”, repeatedly.
Often enough to discourage everyone from ever listening to predictions made by Leeds’ professors.
“Why do Leeds’ professors and researchers write such absurd claims regarding preferred alarmist dooms? “
Because there’s plenty of grant money available to enable them to do so, would be my guess.
Or there is only a pittance, and they’re all trying to get it. Observe a fishery stock pond when you toss in a fish egg. Or paparazzi and an ingenue.
It is fashionable and ingratiates the younger professors with the older, tenured professors who have the power to recommend or deny tenure.
“… used the latest generation of climate models …”
Enough said.
‘Permafrost peatlands approaching tipping point’
Heard it all before. The sooner it happens the better.
Put us all out of our agony ! !
The British have a bee in their bonnet about peat bogs. A few years ago some pundit declared that the bogs are carbon stores and therefore a weapon against climate change. Thus the lemmings are clamouring for rewilding and restoring and are constantly waxing lyrical about their importance in the noble struggle.
it’s all nonsense of course. The bogs contain carbon sequestered in the past, and the potential for further plant growth is determined by its surface size, not its depth. And, incidently, if you wait long enough its content will turn into coal.
Illusory, Arctic warming has been due to weaker solar wind states since 1995 driving a warm AMO phase via negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions, it will cool again through the 2030-2050’s when the solar wind strengthens again.
“More work is needed…”
The ever popular “send more money”.
Were they IPCC climate models? Which ones? ‘Carbon?’ I thought it was CO2 that was the problem? Drivelling nonsense about mitigation. Coeur