Eurasian permafrost instability constrained by reduced sea-ice cover

• Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews
• Main Authors: Vandenberghe, J., Renssen, H., Roche, D.M., Goosse, Hugues, Velichko, A.A., Gorbunov, A., Levavasseur, G.
• Other Authors: Faculty of Earth & Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam - Section of Climate Change and Landscape Dynamics, UCL - SST/ELI/ELIC - Earth & Climate, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia - Laboratory of Evolutionary, SD Russian Academy of Sciences, Almaty, Kazakhstan - Russia Permafrost Institute, Laboratoire CEA/CNRS/UVSQ, Gif-sur-Yvette, France - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE/IPSL
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Pergamon 2012
• Subjects: Permafrost distribution; Artic sea-ice; Permafrost instability; LGM permafrost extent; Permafrost modelling; CECI; CISM; 1443; Arctic; Global warming; Ice; North Atlantic; permafrost; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/107212; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2011.12.001

In order to specify potentially causal relationships between climate, permafrost extent and sea-ice cover we apply a twofold research strategy: (1) we cover a large range of climate conditions varying from full glacial to the relatively warm climate projected for the end of the 21st Century, (2) we combine new proxy-based reconstructions of Eurasian permafrost extent during the LGM and climate model simulations. We ï¬nd that that there is a linear relationship between the winter sea-ice extent in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and the latitude of the southernmost permafrost limit in Eurasia. During the LGM, extensive sea-ice cover caused a zonal permafrost distribution with the southern margin extending W-E and reaching 47°N, contrasting with the present-day NW-SE trending margin (66°-52° N). We infer that under global warming scenarios projected by climate models for the 21st Century the Arctic sea-ice cover decline will cause widespread instability of mainly discontinuous permafrost in Eurasian lowlands