Publication Date:
2016-05-12
Description:
Substantial quantities of organic carbon (OC) are stored in the thick, ice-rich and organic-rich sediments called yedoma deposits, distributed in Eastern Siberia and Alaska today. Quantifying yedoma carbon stocks during the glacial period is important for understanding how much carbon could have been decomposed during the last deglaciation. Yet processes that yield the formation of thick frozen OC in yedoma deposits are missing in global carbon cycle models. Here we incorporate sedimentation parameterizations into the ORCHIDEE-MICT land surface model, which leads to reasonable results in OC vertical distribution and regional budgets, compared with site-specific observations and inventories for today's non-degraded yedoma region. Simulated total soil OC stock for the northern permafrost region during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is 1536-1592 PgC, of which 390-446 PgC are within today's yedoma region. This result is an underestimation since we did not account for the potentially much larger yedoma area during the LGM than present-day.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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