The frozen peatlands in these areas store up to 39 billion tons of carbon – the equivalent to twice that stored in the whole of European forests.
The frozen peatlands in these areas store up to 39 billion tons of carbon – the equivalent to twice that stored in the whole of European forests.
A new study, led by the University of Leeds, used the latest generation of climate models to examine possible future climates of these regions and the likely impact on their permafrost peatlands.
The projections indicate that even with the strongest efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, and therefore limit global warming, by 2040 the climates of Northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost.
However, strong action to reduce emissions could help preserve suitable climates for permafrost peatlands in northern parts of Western Siberia, a landscape containing 13.9 billion tonnes of peat carbon.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, emphasises the importance of socio-economic policies aimed at reducing emissions and mitigating climate change and their role in determining the rate and extent of permafrost peatland thaw.
Study lead author, Richard Fewster is a PhD researcher in the School of Geography at Leeds. He said: “We examined a range of future emission trajectories. This included strong climate-change mitigation scenario, which would see large-scale efforts to curb emissions across sectors, to no-mitigations scenarios and worse-case scenarios.
Read more at: University of Leeds
