Changing Permafrost in the Arctic and its Global Effects in the 21st Century

The northern permafrost region contains approximately 50% of the estimated global belowground organic carbon pool and more than twice as much as is contained in the current atmospheric carbon pool. The sheer size of this carbon pool, together with the large amplitude of predicted arctic climate change implies that there is a high potential for global-scale feedbacks from arctic climate change if these carbon reservoirs are destabilized.

Nonetheless, significant gaps exist in our current state of knowledge that prevents us from producing accurate assessments of the vulnerability of the arctic permafrost to climate change.

PAGE21 will aim to understand and quantify the vulnerability of permafrost environments to a changing global climate, and to investigate the feedback mechanisms associated with increasing greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost zones

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