Eurasian permafrost instability constrained by reduced sea-ice cover
(2012) Quaternary Science Reviews — Vol. 34, p. 16-23 (2012)
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- Authors
- Abstract
- 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 find 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
- Affiliations
Faculty of Earth & Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam Section of Climate Change and Landscape Dynamics Faculty of Earth & Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam Section of Climate Change and Landscape Dynamics 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
Citations
Vandenberghe, J., Renssen, H., Roche, D. M., Goosse, H., Velichko, A. A., Gorbunov, A., & Levavasseur, G. (2012). Eurasian permafrost instability constrained by reduced sea-ice cover. Quaternary Science Reviews, 34, 16-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2011.12.001 (Original work published 2012)