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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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8081356 2023-05-15T14:49:40+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 2021-04-28 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8081356/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33910910 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 en eng American Association for the Advancement of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8081356/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33910910 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY-NC Sci Adv Research Articles Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 2021-05-16T00:26:01Z 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. Text Arctic Climate change permafrost Siberia PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Canada Science Advances 7 18 eabe5799 |
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Research Articles |
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Research Articles 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 |
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Research Articles |
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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. |
format |
Text |
author |
Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard |
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 |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8081356/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33910910 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 |
geographic |
Arctic Canada |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Canada |
genre |
Arctic Climate change permafrost Siberia |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change permafrost Siberia |
op_source |
Sci Adv |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8081356/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33910910 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited. |
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CC-BY-NC |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 |
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Science Advances |
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7 |
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18 |
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