ALBERT

Description: Methane and carbon dioxide were measured with an autonomous and continuous running system on a ferry line crossing the Baltic Sea on a 2–3 day interval from the Mecklenburg Bight to the Gulf of Finland in 2010. Surface methane saturations show great seasonal differences in shallow regions like the Mecklenburg Bight (103–507%) compared to deeper regions like the Gotland Basin (96–161%). The influence of controlling parameters like temperature, wind, mixing depth and processes like upwelling, mixing of the water column and sedimentary methane emissions on methane oversaturation and emission to the atmosphere are investigated. Upwelling was found to influence methane surface concentrations in the area of Gotland significantly during the summer period. In February 2010, an event of elevated methane concentrations in the surface water and water column of the Arkona Basin was observed, which could be linked to a wind-derived water level change as a potential triggering mechanism. The Baltic Sea is a source of methane to the atmosphere throughout the year, with highest fluxes during the winter season. Stratification was found to intensify the formation of a methane reservoir in deeper regions like Gulf of Finland or Bornholm Basin, which leads to long lasting elevated methane concentrations and enhanced methane fluxes, when mixed to the surface during mixed layer deepening in autumn and winter. Methane concentrations and fluxes from shallow regions like the Mecklenburg Bight are rather controlled by sedimentary production and consumption of methane, wind events and the change in temperature-dependent solubility of methane in the surface water. Methane fluxes vary significantly in shallow regions (e.g. Mecklenburg Bight) and regions with a temporal stratification (e.g. Bornholm Basin, Gulf of Finland). On the contrary, areas with a permanent stratification like the Gotland Basin show only small seasonal fluctuations in methane fluxes.

Description: High-latitude soils store vast amounts of perennially frozen and therefore inert organic matter. With rising global temperatures and consequent permafrost degradation, a part of this carbon store will become available for microbial decay and eventual release to the atmosphere. We have developed a simplified, two-dimensional multi-pool model to estimate the strength and timing of future carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes from newly thawed permafrost carbon (i.e. carbon thawed when temperatures rise above pre-industrial levels). We have especially simulated carbon release from deep deposits in Yedoma regions by describing abrupt thaw under thermokarst lakes. The computational efficiency of our model allowed us to run large, multi-centennial ensembles under various scenarios of future warming to express uncertainty inherent to simulations of the permafrost-carbon feedback. Under moderate warming of the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6 scenario, cumulated CO2 fluxes from newly thawed permafrost carbon amount to 20 to 58 petagrammes of carbon (Pg-C) (68% range) by the year 2100 and reach 40 to 98 Pg-C in 2300. The much larger permafrost degradation under strong warming (RCP8.5) results in cumulated CO2 release of 42–141 and 157–313 Pg-C (68% ranges) in the years 2100 and 2300, respectively. Our estimates do only consider fluxes from newly thawed permafrost but not from soils already part of the seasonally thawed active layer under preindustrial climate. Our simulated methane fluxes contribute a few percent to total permafrost carbon release yet they can cause up to 40% of total permafrost-affected radiative forcing in the 21st century (upper 68% range). We infer largest methane emission rates of about 50 Tg-CH4 year–1 around the mid of the 21st century when simulated thermokarst lake extent is at its maximum and when abrupt thaw under thermokarst lakes is accounted for. CH4 release from newly thawed carbon in wetland-affected deposits is only discernible in the 22nd and 23rd century because of the absence of abrupt thaw processes. We further show that release from organic matter stored in deep deposits of Yedoma regions does crucially affect our simulated circumpolar methane fluxes. The additional warming through the release from newly thawed permafrost carbon proved only slightly dependent on the pathway of anthropogenic emission and amounts about 0.03–0.14 °C (68% ranges) by end of the century. The warming increased further in the 22nd and 23rd century and was most pronounced under the RCP6.0 scenario with adding 0.16–0.39 °C (68% range) to simulated global mean surface air temperatures in the year 2300.

Description: Hydroacoustic detection of natural gas release from the seafloor has been conducted in the past by using singlebeam echosounders. In contrast modern multibeam swath mapping systems allow much wider coverage, higher resolution, and offer 3-D spatial correlation. However, up to the present, the extremely high data rate hampers water column backscatter investigations. More sophisticated visualization and processing techniques for water column backscatter analysis are still under development. We here present such water column backscattering data gathered with a 50 kHz prototype multibeam system. Water column backscattering data is presented in videoframes grabbed over 75 s and a "re-sorted" singlebeam presentation. Thus individual gas bubbles rising from the 24 m deep seafloor clearly emerge in the acoustic images and rise velocities can be determined. A sophisticated processing scheme is introduced to identify those rising gas bubbles in the hydroacoustic data. It applies a cross-correlation technique similar to that used in Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) to the acoustic backscatter images. Tempo-spatial drift patterns of the bubbles are assessed and match very well measured and theoretical rise patterns. The application of this processing scheme to our field data gives impressive results with respect to unambiguous bubble detection and remote bubble rise velocimetry. The method can identify and exclude the main driver for misinterpretations, i.e. fish-mediated echoes. Even though image-based cross-correlation techniques are well known in the field of fluid mechanics for high resolution and non-inversive current flow field analysis, this technique was never applied in the proposed sense for an acoustic bubble detector.

Description: Hydroacoustic detection of natural gas release from the seafloor has been conducted in the past by using singlebeam echosounders. In contrast, modern multibeam swath mapping systems allow much wider coverage, higher resolution, and offer 3-D spatial correlation. Up to the present, the extremely high data rate hampers water column backscatter investigations and more sophisticated visualization and processing techniques are needed. Here, we present water column backscatter data acquired with a 50 kHz prototype multibeam system over a period of 75 seconds. Display types are of swath-images as well as of a "re-sorted" singlebeam presentation. Thus, individual and/or groups of gas bubbles rising from the 24 m deep seafloor clearly emerge in the acoustic images, making it possible to estimate rise velocities. A sophisticated processing scheme is introduced to identify those rising gas bubbles in the hydroacoustic data. We apply a cross-correlation technique adapted from particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) to the acoustic backscatter images. Temporal and spatial drift patterns of the bubbles are assessed and are shown to match very well to measured and theoretical rise patterns. The application of this processing to our field data gives clear results with respect to unambiguous bubble detection and remote bubble rise velocimetry. The method can identify and exclude the main source of misinterpretations, i.e. fish-mediated echoes. Although image-based cross-correlation techniques are well known in the field of fluid mechanics for high resolution and non-inversive current flow field analysis, we present the first application of this technique as an acoustic bubble detector.

Description: Both historical and idealized climate model experiments are performed with a variety of Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs) as part of a community contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. Historical simulations start at 850 CE and continue through to 2005. The standard simulations include changes in forcing from solar luminosity, Earth's orbital configuration, CO2, additional greenhouse gases, land use, and sulphate and volcanic aerosols. In spite of very different modelled pre-industrial global surface air temperatures, overall 20th century trends in surface air temperature and carbon uptake are reasonably well simulated when compared to observed trends. Land carbon fluxes show much more variation between models than ocean carbon fluxes, and recent land fluxes appear to be slightly underestimated. It is possible that recent modelled climate trends or climate–carbon feedbacks are overestimated resulting in too much land carbon loss or that carbon uptake due to CO2 and/or nitrogen fertilization is underestimated. Several one thousand year long, idealized, 2 × and 4 × CO2 experiments are used to quantify standard model characteristics, including transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities, and climate–carbon feedbacks. The values from EMICs generally fall within the range given by general circulation models. Seven additional historical simulations, each including a single specified forcing, are used to assess the contributions of different climate forcings to the overall climate and carbon cycle response. The response of surface air temperature is the linear sum of the individual forcings, while the carbon cycle response shows a non-linear interaction between land-use change and CO2 forcings for some models. Finally, the preindustrial portions of the last millennium simulations are used to assess historical model carbon-climate feedbacks. Given the specified forcing, there is a tendency for the EMICs to underestimate the drop in surface air temperature and CO2 between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age estimated from palaeoclimate reconstructions. This in turn could be a result of unforced variability within the climate system, uncertainty in the reconstructions of temperature and CO2, errors in the reconstructions of forcing used to drive the models, or the incomplete representation of certain processes within the models. Given the forcing datasets used in this study, the models calculate significant land-use emissions over the pre-industrial period. This implies that land-use emissions might need to be taken into account, when making estimates of climate–carbon feedbacks from palaeoclimate reconstructions.

Description: Both historical and idealized climate model experiments are performed with a variety of Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) as part of a community contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. Historical simulations start at 850 CE and continue through to 2005. The standard simulations include changes in forcing from solar luminosity, Earth's orbital configuration, CO2, additional greenhouse gases, land-use, and sulphate and volcanic aerosols. In spite of very different modelled pre-industrial global surface air temperatures, overall 20th century trends in surface air temperature and carbon uptake are reasonably well simulated when compared to observed trends. Land carbon fluxes show much more variation between models than ocean carbon fluxes, and recent land fluxes seem to be underestimated. It is possible that recent modelled climate trends or climate-carbon feedbacks are overestimated resulting in too much land carbon loss or that carbon uptake due to CO2 and/or nitrogen fertilization is underestimated. Several one thousand year long, idealized, 2x and 4x CO2 experiments are used to quantify standard model characteristics, including transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities, and climate-carbon feedbacks. The values from EMICs generally fall within the range given by General Circulation Models. Seven additional historical simulations, each including a single specified forcing, are used to assess the contributions of different climate forcings to the overall climate and carbon cycle response. The response of surface air temperature is the linear sum of the individual forcings, while the carbon cycle response shows considerable synergy between land-use change and CO2 forcings for some models. Finally, the preindustrial portions of the last millennium simulations are used to assess historical model carbon-climate feedbacks. Given the specified forcing, there is a tendency for the EMICs to underestimate the drop in surface air temperature and CO2 between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age estimated from paleoclimate reconstructions. This in turn could be a result of errors in the reconstructions of volcanic and/or solar radiative forcing used to drive the models or the incomplete representation of certain processes or variability within the models. Given the datasets used in this study, the models calculate significant land-use emissions over the pre-industrial. This implies that land-use emissions might need to be taken into account, when making estimates of climate-carbon feedbacks from paleoclimate reconstructions.

Description: Thawing of permafrost and the associated release of carbon constitutes a positive feedback in the climate system, elevating the effect of anthropogenic GHG emissions on global-mean temperatures. Multiple factors have hindered the quantification of this feedback, which was not included in the CMIP3 and C4MIP generation of AOGCMs and carbon cycle models. There are considerable uncertainties in the rate and extent of permafrost thaw, the hydrological and vegetation response to permafrost thaw, the decomposition timescales of freshly thawed organic material, the proportion of soil carbon that might be emitted as carbon dioxide via aerobic decomposition or as methane via anaerobic decomposition, and in the magnitude of the high latitude amplification of global warming that will drive permafrost degradation. Additionally, there are extensive and poorly characterized regional heterogeneities in soil properties, carbon content, and hydrology. Here, we couple a new permafrost module to a reduced complexity carbon-cycle climate model, which allows us to perform a large ensemble of simulations. The ensemble is designed to span the uncertainties listed above and thereby the results provide an estimate of the potential strength of the permafrost-carbon feedback. For the high CO2 concentration scenario (RCP8.5), 12–52 PgC, or an extra 3–11 % above projected net CO2 emissions from land carbon cycle feedbacks, are released by 2100 (68 % uncertainty range). This leads to an additional warming of 0.02–0.11 °C. Though projected 21st century emissions are relatively modest, ongoing permafrost thaw and slow but steady soil carbon decomposition means that, by 2300, more than half of the potentially vulnerable permafrost carbon stock in the upper 3m of soil layer (600–1000 PgC) could be released as CO2, with an extra 1–3 % being released as methane. Our results also suggest that mitigation action in line with the lower scenario RCP3-PD could contain Arctic temperature increase sufficiently that thawing of the permafrost area is limited to 15–30 % and the permafrost-carbon induced temperature increase does not exceed 0.01–0.07 °C by 2300.

Description: Methane and carbon dioxide were measured with an autonomous and continuous running system on a ferry line crossing the Baltic Sea on a 2–3 day interval from the Mecklenburg Bight to the Gulf of Finland in 2010. Surface methane saturations show great seasonal differences in shallow regions like the Mecklenburg Bight (103–507%) compared to deeper regions like the Gotland Basin (96–161%). The influence of controlling parameters like temperature, wind, mixing depth and processes like upwelling, mixing of the water column and sedimentary methane emissions on methane oversaturation and emission to the atmosphere are investigated. Upwelling was found to influence methane surface concentrations in the area of Gotland significantly during the summer period. In February 2010, an event of elevated methane concentrations in the surface water and water column of the Arkona Basin was observed, which could be linked to a wind-derived water level change as a potential triggering mechanism. The Baltic Sea is a source of methane to the atmosphere throughout the year, with highest fluxes occurring during the winter season. Stratification was found to promote the formation of a methane reservoir in deeper regions like Gulf of Finland or Bornholm Basin, which leads to long lasting elevated methane concentrations and enhanced methane fluxes, when mixed to the surface during mixed layer deepening in autumn and winter. Methane concentrations and fluxes from shallow regions like the Mecklenburg Bight are predominantly controlled by sedimentary production and consumption of methane, wind events and the change in temperature-dependent solubility of methane in the surface water. Methane fluxes vary significantly in shallow regions (e.g. Mecklenburg Bight) and regions with a temporal stratification (e.g. Bornholm Basin, Gulf of Finland). On the contrary, areas with a permanent stratification like the Gotland Basin show only small seasonal fluctuations in methane fluxes.

Description: High-latitude soils store vast amounts of perennially frozen and therefore inert organic matter. With rising global temperatures and consequent permafrost degradation, a part of this carbon stock will become available for microbial decay and eventual release to the atmosphere. We have developed a simplified, two-dimensional multi-pool model to estimate the strength and timing of future carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes from newly thawed permafrost carbon (i.e. carbon thawed when temperatures rise above pre-industrial levels). We have especially simulated carbon release from deep deposits in Yedoma regions by describing abrupt thaw under newly formed thermokarst lakes. The computational efficiency of our model allowed us to run large, multi-centennial ensembles under various scenarios of future warming to express uncertainty inherent to simulations of the permafrost carbon feedback. Under moderate warming of the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6 scenario, cumulated CO2 fluxes from newly thawed permafrost carbon amount to 20 to 58 petagrams of carbon (Pg-C) (68% range) by the year 2100 and reach 40 to 98 Pg-C in 2300. The much larger permafrost degradation under strong warming (RCP8.5) results in cumulated CO2 release of 42 to 141 Pg-C and 157 to 313 Pg-C (68% ranges) in the years 2100 and 2300, respectively. Our estimates only consider fluxes from newly thawed permafrost, not from soils already part of the seasonally thawed active layer under pre-industrial climate. Our simulated CH4 fluxes contribute a few percent to total permafrost carbon release yet they can cause up to 40% of total permafrost-affected radiative forcing in the 21st century (upper 68% range). We infer largest CH4 emission rates of about 50 Tg-CH4 per year around the middle of the 21st century when simulated thermokarst lake extent is at its maximum and when abrupt thaw under thermokarst lakes is taken into account. CH4 release from newly thawed carbon in wetland-affected deposits is only discernible in the 22nd and 23rd century because of the absence of abrupt thaw processes. We further show that release from organic matter stored in deep deposits of Yedoma regions crucially affects our simulated circumpolar CH4 fluxes. The additional warming through the release from newly thawed permafrost carbon proved only slightly dependent on the pathway of anthropogenic emission and amounts to about 0.03–0.14 °C (68% ranges) by end of the century. The warming increased further in the 22nd and 23rd century and was most pronounced under the RCP6.0 scenario, adding 0.16 to 0.39 °C (68% range) to simulated global mean surface air temperatures in the year 2300.

Description: Thawing of permafrost and the associated release of carbon constitutes a positive feedback in the climate system, elevating the effect of anthropogenic GHG emissions on global-mean temperatures. Multiple factors have hindered the quantification of this feedback, which was not included in climate carbon-cycle models which participated in recent model intercomparisons (such as the Coupled Carbon Cycle Climate Model Intercomparison Project – C4MIP) . There are considerable uncertainties in the rate and extent of permafrost thaw, the hydrological and vegetation response to permafrost thaw, the decomposition timescales of freshly thawed organic material, the proportion of soil carbon that might be emitted as carbon dioxide via aerobic decomposition or as methane via anaerobic decomposition, and in the magnitude of the high latitude amplification of global warming that will drive permafrost degradation. Additionally, there are extensive and poorly characterized regional heterogeneities in soil properties, carbon content, and hydrology. Here, we couple a new permafrost module to a reduced complexity carbon-cycle climate model, which allows us to perform a large ensemble of simulations. The ensemble is designed to span the uncertainties listed above and thereby the results provide an estimate of the potential strength of the feedback from newly thawed permafrost carbon. For the high CO2 concentration scenario (RCP8.5), 33–114 GtC (giga tons of Carbon) are released by 2100 (68 % uncertainty range). This leads to an additional warming of 0.04–0.23 °C. Though projected 21st century permafrost carbon emissions are relatively modest, ongoing permafrost thaw and slow but steady soil carbon decomposition means that, by 2300, about half of the potentially vulnerable permafrost carbon stock in the upper 3 m of soil layer (600–1000 GtC) could be released as CO2, with an extra 1–4 % being released as methane. Our results also suggest that mitigation action in line with the lower scenario RCP3-PD could contain Arctic temperature increase sufficiently that thawing of the permafrost area is limited to 9–23 % and the permafrost-carbon induced temperature increase does not exceed 0.04–0.16 °C by 2300.