Collaborative Research: Permafrost Carbon Network: Synthesizing flux observations for benchmarking model projections of permafrost carbon exchange

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Permafrost is ground that is frozen all year round for two or more years. Permafrost contains carbon from the remnants of plants, microbes, and animals that have accumulated over thousands of years. Present estimates suggest that permafrost currently holds twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, which are released as carbon dioxide and methane gas as the permafrost degrades in response to climate warming. Release of just a fraction of this frozen carbon could have significant impacts on the global carbon cycle that may dramatically increase the rate of future global climate warming and accelerate sea-level rise, extreme weather, droughts, and impacts on agriculture at rates beyond those currently projected by models. Most climate models do not yet fully include the feedback loops that cause northern regions to emit additional carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, so the level of risk to society is uncertain. This proposal supports the Permafrost Carbon Network, formed to link biological carbon cycle research with well-developed networks in the physical sciences focused on the thermal state of permafrost. The Permafrost Carbon Network produces new knowledge by synthesizing a wide range of research results into a more coherent circumpolar view of the role of permafrost carbon in driving future climate change.This proposal supports the activities of the Permafrost Carbon Network to: 1) expand networking opportunities that engage the community and enable new science synthesis ideas to arise through the activities of working groups, 2) synthesize permafrost zone carbon flux data from US and international sites to produce a unified time series of ecosystem-atmosphere carbon exchange that can be updated as new data become available, and 3) benchmark the recently completed Permafrost Carbon Network model inter-comparison experiment using new and past data synthesis and experimental results. This combination of research and networking activities gives scientists and decision makers an annually updated view of changing Arctic carbon emissions to the atmosphere in relation to Earth System Model forecasts, while also helping to prioritize and implement improvements to climate models. The new research activities and expanded networking build upon past Permafrost Carbon Network momentum as a foundation to increase, distill, and communicate our understanding of change in this remote region with its important consequences for society.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.