First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System
Due to an imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere, excess heat has accumulated in Earth's climate system in recent decades, driving global warming and climatic changes. To date, it has not been quantified how much of this excess heat is used to melt ground...
Published in: | Geophysical Research Letters |
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2023
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Online Access: | https://hal.science/hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183/document https://hal.science/hal-04191183/file/NitzbonEA_Permafrost_grl2023.pdf https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102053 |
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ftccsdartic:oai:HAL:hal-04191183v1 2023-12-17T10:31:29+01:00 First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System Nitzbon, Jan Krinner, Gerhard Schneider von Deimling, Thomas Werner, Martin Langer, Moritz Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE) Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ) Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam (VU) 2023 https://hal.science/hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183/document https://hal.science/hal-04191183/file/NitzbonEA_Permafrost_grl2023.pdf https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102053 en eng HAL CCSD American Geophysical Union info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1029/2022gl102053 hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183/document https://hal.science/hal-04191183/file/NitzbonEA_Permafrost_grl2023.pdf doi:10.1029/2022gl102053 info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess ISSN: 0094-8276 EISSN: 1944-8007 Geophysical Research Letters https://hal.science/hal-04191183 Geophysical Research Letters, 2023, 50 (12), pp.e2022GL102053. ⟨10.1029/2022gl102053⟩ [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes info:eu-repo/semantics/article Journal articles 2023 ftccsdartic https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102053 2023-11-18T23:44:48Z Due to an imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere, excess heat has accumulated in Earth's climate system in recent decades, driving global warming and climatic changes. To date, it has not been quantified how much of this excess heat is used to melt ground ice in permafrost. Here, we diagnose changes in sensible and latent ground heat contents in the northern terrestrial permafrost region from ensemble-simulations of a tailored land surface model. We find that between 1980 and 2018, about 3.9 ^+1.4 -1.6 ZJ of heat, of which 1.7^1.3 -1.4 ZJ (44%) were used to melt ground ice, were absorbed by permafrost. Our estimate, which does not yet account for the potentially increased heat uptake due to thermokarst processes in ice-rich terrain, suggests that permafrost is a persistent heat sink comparable in magnitude to other components of the cryosphere and must be explicitly considered when assessing Earth's energy imbalance. Article in Journal/Newspaper Ice permafrost Thermokarst Archive ouverte HAL (Hyper Article en Ligne, CCSD - Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) Geophysical Research Letters 50 12 |
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Open Polar |
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Archive ouverte HAL (Hyper Article en Ligne, CCSD - Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) |
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ftccsdartic |
language |
English |
topic |
[SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes |
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[SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes Nitzbon, Jan Krinner, Gerhard Schneider von Deimling, Thomas Werner, Martin Langer, Moritz First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System |
topic_facet |
[SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes |
description |
Due to an imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere, excess heat has accumulated in Earth's climate system in recent decades, driving global warming and climatic changes. To date, it has not been quantified how much of this excess heat is used to melt ground ice in permafrost. Here, we diagnose changes in sensible and latent ground heat contents in the northern terrestrial permafrost region from ensemble-simulations of a tailored land surface model. We find that between 1980 and 2018, about 3.9 ^+1.4 -1.6 ZJ of heat, of which 1.7^1.3 -1.4 ZJ (44%) were used to melt ground ice, were absorbed by permafrost. Our estimate, which does not yet account for the potentially increased heat uptake due to thermokarst processes in ice-rich terrain, suggests that permafrost is a persistent heat sink comparable in magnitude to other components of the cryosphere and must be explicitly considered when assessing Earth's energy imbalance. |
author2 |
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE) Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ) Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam (VU) |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Nitzbon, Jan Krinner, Gerhard Schneider von Deimling, Thomas Werner, Martin Langer, Moritz |
author_facet |
Nitzbon, Jan Krinner, Gerhard Schneider von Deimling, Thomas Werner, Martin Langer, Moritz |
author_sort |
Nitzbon, Jan |
title |
First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System |
title_short |
First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System |
title_full |
First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System |
title_fullStr |
First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System |
title_full_unstemmed |
First Quantification of the Permafrost Heat Sink in the Earth's Climate System |
title_sort |
first quantification of the permafrost heat sink in the earth's climate system |
publisher |
HAL CCSD |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://hal.science/hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183/document https://hal.science/hal-04191183/file/NitzbonEA_Permafrost_grl2023.pdf https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102053 |
genre |
Ice permafrost Thermokarst |
genre_facet |
Ice permafrost Thermokarst |
op_source |
ISSN: 0094-8276 EISSN: 1944-8007 Geophysical Research Letters https://hal.science/hal-04191183 Geophysical Research Letters, 2023, 50 (12), pp.e2022GL102053. ⟨10.1029/2022gl102053⟩ |
op_relation |
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1029/2022gl102053 hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183 https://hal.science/hal-04191183/document https://hal.science/hal-04191183/file/NitzbonEA_Permafrost_grl2023.pdf doi:10.1029/2022gl102053 |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102053 |
container_title |
Geophysical Research Letters |
container_volume |
50 |
container_issue |
12 |
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1785584790724935680 |