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Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau

Soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in permafrost across the high-latitude/altitude Northern Hemisphere represents an important potential carbon source under future warming. Here, we provide a comprehensive investigation on the spatiotemporal dynamics of SOC over the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau (TP),...

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Autores principales: Wang, Taihua, Yang, Dawen, Yang, Yuting, Piao, Shilong, Li, Xin, Cheng, Guodong, Fu, Bojie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7202872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32494710
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz3513
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author Wang, Taihua
Yang, Dawen
Yang, Yuting
Piao, Shilong
Li, Xin
Cheng, Guodong
Fu, Bojie
author_facet Wang, Taihua
Yang, Dawen
Yang, Yuting
Piao, Shilong
Li, Xin
Cheng, Guodong
Fu, Bojie
author_sort Wang, Taihua
collection PubMed
description Soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in permafrost across the high-latitude/altitude Northern Hemisphere represents an important potential carbon source under future warming. Here, we provide a comprehensive investigation on the spatiotemporal dynamics of SOC over the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau (TP), which has received less attention compared with the circum-Arctic region. The permafrost region covers ~42% of the entire TP and contains ~37.21 Pg perennially frozen SOC at the baseline period (2006–2015). With continuous warming, the active layer is projected to further deepen, resulting in ~1.86 ± 0.49 Pg and ~3.80 ± 0.76 Pg permafrost carbon thawing by 2100 under moderate and high representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), respectively. This could largely offset the regional carbon sink and even potentially turn the region into a net carbon source. Our findings also highlight the importance of deep permafrost thawing that is generally ignored in current Earth system models.
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spelling pubmed-72028722020-06-02 Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau Wang, Taihua Yang, Dawen Yang, Yuting Piao, Shilong Li, Xin Cheng, Guodong Fu, Bojie Sci Adv Research Articles Soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in permafrost across the high-latitude/altitude Northern Hemisphere represents an important potential carbon source under future warming. Here, we provide a comprehensive investigation on the spatiotemporal dynamics of SOC over the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau (TP), which has received less attention compared with the circum-Arctic region. The permafrost region covers ~42% of the entire TP and contains ~37.21 Pg perennially frozen SOC at the baseline period (2006–2015). With continuous warming, the active layer is projected to further deepen, resulting in ~1.86 ± 0.49 Pg and ~3.80 ± 0.76 Pg permafrost carbon thawing by 2100 under moderate and high representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), respectively. This could largely offset the regional carbon sink and even potentially turn the region into a net carbon source. Our findings also highlight the importance of deep permafrost thawing that is generally ignored in current Earth system models. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7202872/ /pubmed/32494710 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz3513 Text en Copyright © 2020 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). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://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.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Wang, Taihua
Yang, Dawen
Yang, Yuting
Piao, Shilong
Li, Xin
Cheng, Guodong
Fu, Bojie
Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau
title Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau
title_full Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau
title_fullStr Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau
title_full_unstemmed Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau
title_short Permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the Tibetan Plateau
title_sort permafrost thawing puts the frozen carbon at risk over the tibetan plateau
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7202872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32494710
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz3513
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