Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment
Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) – landslides caused by the melt of ground ice in permafrost – have become more common in the Arctic, but the timing of this recent increase and its links to climate have not been fully established. Here we annually resolve RTS formation and longevity for Banks Island,...
Published in: | Nature Communications |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445831/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940802 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 |
id |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6445831 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6445831 2023-05-15T14:55:02+02:00 Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment Lewkowicz, Antoni G. Way, Robert G. 2019-04-02 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445831/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940802 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445831/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940802 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 2019-04-07T00:46:36Z Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) – landslides caused by the melt of ground ice in permafrost – have become more common in the Arctic, but the timing of this recent increase and its links to climate have not been fully established. Here we annually resolve RTS formation and longevity for Banks Island, Canada (70,000 km(2)) using the Google Earth Engine Timelapse dataset. We describe a 60-fold increase in numbers between 1984 and 2015 as more than 4000 RTS were initiated, primarily following four particularly warm summers. Colour change due to increased turbidity occurred in 288 lakes affected by RTS outflows and sediment accumulated in many valley floors. Modelled RTS initiation rates increased by an order of magnitude between 1906–1985 and 2006–2015, and are projected under RCP4.5 to rise to >10,000 decade(−1) after 2075. These results provide additional evidence that ice-rich continuous permafrost terrain can be highly vulnerable to changing summer climate. Text Arctic Banks Island Ice permafrost Thermokarst PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Canada Nature Communications 10 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Article |
spellingShingle |
Article Lewkowicz, Antoni G. Way, Robert G. Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment |
topic_facet |
Article |
description |
Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) – landslides caused by the melt of ground ice in permafrost – have become more common in the Arctic, but the timing of this recent increase and its links to climate have not been fully established. Here we annually resolve RTS formation and longevity for Banks Island, Canada (70,000 km(2)) using the Google Earth Engine Timelapse dataset. We describe a 60-fold increase in numbers between 1984 and 2015 as more than 4000 RTS were initiated, primarily following four particularly warm summers. Colour change due to increased turbidity occurred in 288 lakes affected by RTS outflows and sediment accumulated in many valley floors. Modelled RTS initiation rates increased by an order of magnitude between 1906–1985 and 2006–2015, and are projected under RCP4.5 to rise to >10,000 decade(−1) after 2075. These results provide additional evidence that ice-rich continuous permafrost terrain can be highly vulnerable to changing summer climate. |
format |
Text |
author |
Lewkowicz, Antoni G. Way, Robert G. |
author_facet |
Lewkowicz, Antoni G. Way, Robert G. |
author_sort |
Lewkowicz, Antoni G. |
title |
Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment |
title_short |
Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment |
title_full |
Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment |
title_fullStr |
Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment |
title_full_unstemmed |
Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment |
title_sort |
extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a high arctic environment |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445831/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940802 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 |
geographic |
Arctic Canada |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Canada |
genre |
Arctic Banks Island Ice permafrost Thermokarst |
genre_facet |
Arctic Banks Island Ice permafrost Thermokarst |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445831/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30940802 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09314-7 |
container_title |
Nature Communications |
container_volume |
10 |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1766326823259471872 |