Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems
Permafrost carbon represents a potentially powerful amplifier of climate change, but little is known about permafrost sensitivity and associated carbon cycling during past warm intervals. We reconstruct permafrost history in western Canada during Pleistocene interglacials from 130 uranium-thorium ag...
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Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 |
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ftmit:oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/132651 2023-06-11T04:08:41+02:00 Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences 2021-09-17T14:41:31Z application/pdf https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 en eng American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 Science Advances 2375-2548 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 Biller-Celander, Nicole et al. "Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems." Science Advances 7, 18 (April 2021): eabe5799. © 2021 The Authors Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Science Advances Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2021 ftmit https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 2023-05-29T08:42:30Z Permafrost carbon represents a potentially powerful amplifier of climate change, but little is known about permafrost sensitivity and associated carbon cycling during past warm intervals. We reconstruct permafrost history in western Canada during Pleistocene interglacials from 130 uranium-thorium ages on 72 speleothems, cave deposits that only accumulate with deep ground thaw. We infer that permafrost thaw extended to the high Arctic during one or more periods between ~1.5 million and 0.5 million years ago but has been limited to the sub-Arctic since 400,000 years ago. Our Canadian speleothem growth history closely parallels an analogous reconstruction from Siberia, suggesting that this shift toward more stable permafrost across the Pleistocene may have been Arctic-wide. In contrast, interglacial greenhouse gas concentrations were relatively stable throughout the Pleistocene, suggesting that either permafrost thaw did not trigger substantial carbon release to the atmosphere or it was offset by carbon uptake elsewhere on glacial-interglacial time scales. NSF (Grants ARC-1607816 and 1607968) Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Climate change permafrost Siberia DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Arctic Canada Science Advances 7 18 |
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DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
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English |
description |
Permafrost carbon represents a potentially powerful amplifier of climate change, but little is known about permafrost sensitivity and associated carbon cycling during past warm intervals. We reconstruct permafrost history in western Canada during Pleistocene interglacials from 130 uranium-thorium ages on 72 speleothems, cave deposits that only accumulate with deep ground thaw. We infer that permafrost thaw extended to the high Arctic during one or more periods between ~1.5 million and 0.5 million years ago but has been limited to the sub-Arctic since 400,000 years ago. Our Canadian speleothem growth history closely parallels an analogous reconstruction from Siberia, suggesting that this shift toward more stable permafrost across the Pleistocene may have been Arctic-wide. In contrast, interglacial greenhouse gas concentrations were relatively stable throughout the Pleistocene, suggesting that either permafrost thaw did not trigger substantial carbon release to the atmosphere or it was offset by carbon uptake elsewhere on glacial-interglacial time scales. NSF (Grants ARC-1607816 and 1607968) |
author2 |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard |
spellingShingle |
Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
author_facet |
Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard |
author_sort |
Biller-Celander, Nicole |
title |
Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
title_short |
Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
title_full |
Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
title_fullStr |
Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
title_full_unstemmed |
Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
title_sort |
increasing pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from canadian speleothems |
publisher |
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 |
geographic |
Arctic Canada |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Canada |
genre |
Arctic Climate change permafrost Siberia |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change permafrost Siberia |
op_source |
Science Advances |
op_relation |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 Science Advances 2375-2548 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 Biller-Celander, Nicole et al. "Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems." Science Advances 7, 18 (April 2021): eabe5799. © 2021 The Authors |
op_rights |
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 |
container_title |
Science Advances |
container_volume |
7 |
container_issue |
18 |
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1768382112376815616 |