Frozen ponds: production and storage of methane during the Arctic winter in a lowland tundra landscape in northern Siberia, Lena River delta

Langer, Moritz; Westermann, Sebastian; Anthony, K. M. Walter; Wischnewski, Karoline; Boike, Julia

doi:10.5194/bg-12-977-2015

Cited by 73 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Based on yearround eddy flux measurements of methane emissions from Alaskan Arctic tundra sites, Zona et al (2016) find that cold season (September to May) emissions account for ≥ 50 % of the annual methane flux, with the highest emissions from non-inundated upland tundra. They find a major fraction of cold season emissions occur during the "zero curtain" period, when subsurface soil temperatures are near 0 • C. Langer et al (2015) report winter emissions from tundra ponds in Siberia as they are freezing during early winter. They analyzed concentrations of methane in bubbles (trapped in the lake ice), which were higher at depths than at the ice surface.…”

Section: Regional Evaluation Over West Siberian Lowlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of natural methane fluxes simulated by the CLASS-CTEM model

2018

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Abstract. Natural methane emissions from wetlands and fire, and soil uptake of methane, simulated using the Canadian Land Surface Scheme and Canadian Terrestrial Ecosystem (CLASS-CTEM) modelling framework, over the historical 1850-2008 period, are assessed by using a one-box model of atmospheric methane burden. This one-box model also requires anthropogenic emissions and the methane sink in the atmosphere to simulate the historical evolution of global methane burden. For this purpose, global anthropogenic methane emissions for the period 1850-2008 were reconstructed based on the harmonized representative concentration pathway (RCP) and Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) data sets. The methane sink in the atmosphere is represented using biascorrected methane lifetimes from the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (CMAM). The resulting evolution of atmospheric methane concentration over the historical period compares reasonably well with observation-based estimates (correlation = 0.99, root mean square error = 35 ppb). The modelled natural emissions are also assessed using an inverse procedure where the methane lifetimes required to reproduce the observed year-to-year increase in atmospheric methane burden are calculated based upon the specified global anthropogenic and modelled natural emissions that we have used here. These calculated methane lifetimes over the historical period fall within the uncertainty range of observation-based estimates. The present-day (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) values of modelled methane emissions from wetlands (169 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ) and fire (27 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ), methane uptake by soil (29 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ), and the budget terms associated with overall anthropogenic and natural emissions are consistent with estimates reported in a recent global methane budget that is based on top-down approaches constrained by observed atmospheric methane burden. The modelled wetland emissions increase over the historical period in response to both increases in precipitation and in atmospheric CO 2 concentration. This increase in wetland emissions over the historical period yields evolution of the atmospheric methane concentration that compares better with observation-based values than the case when wetland emissions are held constant over the historical period.

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Section: Regional Evaluation Over West Siberian Lowlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of natural methane fluxes simulated by the CLASS-CTEM model

2018

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“…In permafrost regions, a continuously unfrozen layer (talik) may develop underneath such deeper waterbodies, which strongly affects carbon cycling in these sediments (Schuur et al, 2008). Several studies have shown a positive correlation between waterbody surface area and depth (Langer et al, 2015;Wik et al, 2016). However, there is large variability in the areadepth relationship, i.e., there are large but shallow lakes that freeze to the bottom and small but deep ponds that develop a talik, and these characteristics may also change over time with changes in water level and basin morphology.…”

Section: Definition Of Ponds and Lakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Arctic ponds are characterized by intense biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes. They have been identified as a large source of carbon fluxes compared to the surrounding terrestrial environment (Rautio et al, 2011;Laurion et al, 2010;Abnizova et al, 2012;Langer et al, 2015;Wik et al, 2016;Bouchard et al, 2015). Due to their small surface areas and shallow depths, ponds are especially prone to change; various studies reported ponds drying out or increasing in abundance due to new thermokarst or the drainage of large lakes (Jones et al, 2011;Andresen and Lougheed, 2015;Liljedahl et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

PeRL: a circum-Arctic Permafrost Region Pond and Lake database

Muster

Roth

Langer

et al. 2017

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. Ponds and lakes are abundant in Arctic permafrost lowlands. They play an important role in Arctic wetland ecosystems by regulating carbon, water, and energy fluxes and providing freshwater habitats. However, ponds, i.e., waterbodies with surface areas smaller than 1.0 × 10 4 m 2 , have not been inventoried on global and regional scales. The Permafrost Region Pond and Lake (PeRL) database presents the results of a circum-Arctic effort to map ponds and lakes from modern (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery with a resolution of 5 m or better. The database also includes historical imagery from 1948 to 1965 with a resolution of 6 m or better. PeRL includes 69 maps covering a wide range of environmental conditions from tundra to boreal regions and from continuous to discontinuous permafrost zones. Waterbody maps are linked to regional permafrost landscape maps which provide information on permafrost extent, ground ice volume, geology, and lithology. This paper describes waterbody classification and accuracy, and presents statistics of waterbody distribution for each site. Maps of permafrost landscapes in Alaska, Canada, and Russia are used to extrapolate waterbody statistics from the site level to regional landscape units. PeRL presents pond and lake estimates for a total area of Published by Copernicus Publications. S. Muster et al.: A circum-Arctic PeRL1.4 × 10 6 km 2 across the Arctic, about 17 % of the Arctic lowland (< 300 m a.s.l.) land surface area. PeRL waterbodies with sizes of 1.0 × 10 6 m 2 down to 1.0 × 10 2 m 2 contributed up to 21 % to the total water fraction. Waterbody density ranged from 1.0 × 10 to 9.4 × 10 1 km −2 . Ponds are the dominant waterbody type by number in all landscapes representing 45-99 % of the total waterbody number. The implementation of PeRL size distributions in land surface models will greatly improve the investigation and projection of surface inundation and carbon fluxes in permafrost lowlands. Waterbody maps, study area boundaries, and maps of regional permafrost landscapes including detailed metadata are available at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.868349.

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“…4.2.1) challenging. Furthermore, small water bodies and lakes can strongly modify the ground thermal regime both in the underlying ground and in the surrounding land areas Langer et al, 2015), so the model results are questionable in areas with a high fraction of open water areas (Muster et al, 2012). While more sophisticated model schemes (Plug and West, 2009;Westermann et al, 2016) can simulate the ground thermal regime of such features, a spatially distributed application is challenging: in general, higher-complexity models require additional input data and model parameter sets (e.g., precipitation for a water balance model, Endrizzi et al, 2014), for which the spatial and temporal distributions are poorly known.…”

Section: The Cryogrid 2 Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient modeling of the ground thermal conditions using satellite data in the Lena River delta, Siberia

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Permafrost is a sensitive element of the cryosphere, but operational monitoring of the ground thermal conditions on large spatial scales is still lacking. Here, we demonstrate a remote-sensing-based scheme that is capable of estimating the transient evolution of ground temperatures and active layer thickness by means of the ground thermal model CryoGrid 2. The scheme is applied to an area of approximately 16 000 km 2 in the Lena River delta (LRD) in NE Siberia for a period of 14 years. The forcing data sets at 1 km spatial and weekly temporal resolution are synthesized from satellite products and fields of meteorological variables from the ERA-Interim reanalysis. To assign spatially distributed ground thermal properties, a stratigraphic classification based on geomorphological observations and mapping is constructed, which accounts for the large-scale patterns of sediment types, ground ice and surface properties in the Lena River delta.A comparison of the model forcing to in situ measurements on Samoylov Island in the southern part of the study area yields an acceptable agreement for the purpose of ground thermal modeling, for surface temperature, snow depth, and timing of the onset and termination of the winter snow cover. The model results are compared to observations of ground temperatures and thaw depths at nine sites in the Lena River delta, suggesting that thaw depths are in most cases reproduced to within 0.1 m or less and multi-year averages of ground temperatures within 1-2 • C. Comparison of monthly average temperatures at depths of 2-3 m in five boreholes yielded an RMSE of 1

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Frozen ponds: production and storage of methane during the Arctic winter in a lowland tundra landscape in northern Siberia, Lena River delta

Cited by 73 publications

References 45 publications

An assessment of natural methane fluxes simulated by the CLASS-CTEM model

An assessment of natural methane fluxes simulated by the CLASS-CTEM model

PeRL: a circum-Arctic Permafrost Region Pond and Lake database

Transient modeling of the ground thermal conditions using satellite data in the Lena River delta, Siberia

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