COUP: Constraining uncertainties in the permafrost-climate feedback

随着全球气候变暖，永久冻土融化可能会导致北极和北方生态系统温室气体排放增加。科学家们一致认为，这种永久冻土-气候反馈对全球气候系统很重要，但其规模和时间仍然知之甚少。政变的总体目标是利用对景观尺度过程的详细了解来改进全球尺度的气候模型。更好地预测永久冻土地区将如何应对气候变暖，可以帮助我们理解和规划未来的全球变化。近年来，在理解冻土生态系统对气候变暖的复杂反应方面取得了很大的科学进展。尽管如此，在将这些过程纳入全球气候模型方面，仍然存在巨大的挑战。永久冻土生态系统是高度多变的，研究表明，需要非常详细的实地调查才能了解复杂性。由于全球尺度模型不能在如此高的分辨率下运行，我们提出了一种方法，其中使用局部景观尺度的实地研究和建模来确定那些应该在全球模型中改进的关键变量。我们将在涵盖所有泛欧亚环境条件的实地地点进行仔细的实地研究和高分辨率模拟。由此获得的系统理解将被用来(1)调整关键变量，使其对全球模型有用，(2)改进新的全球气候模型。在最后一步，将运行改进的全球气候模型，以量化永久冻土融化对全球气候的影响。在COUP中产生的数据集将在网上免费提供，以便其他科学家使用，并帮助改进所有全球气候模型。政变旨在最大限度地提高与正在进行的项目的协同效应。许多所需的数据和系统理解都是在其他研究方案中产生的。

As the global climate warms, thawing permafrost may lead to increased greenhouse gas release from Arctic and Boreal ecosystems. Scientists agree that this permafrost-climate feedback is important to the global climate system, but its magnitude and timing remains poorly understood. The overall aim of COUP is to use detailed understanding of landscape-scale processes to improve global scale climate models. Better predictions of how permafrost areas will respond to a warming climate can help us understand and plan for future global change. In recent years much scientific progress has been made towards understanding the complex responses of permafrost ecosystem to climate warming. Despite this, large challenges remain when it comes to including these processes in global climate models. Permafrost ecosystems are highly variable and studies show that very detailed field investigations are needed to understand complexities. Because global scale models cannot run at such high-resolutions, we propose an approach where local landscape-scale field studies and modelling are used to identify those key variables that should be improved in global models. We will carry out careful field studies and high-resolution modelling at field sites covering all pan-Eurasian environmental conditions. The system understanding gained from this will then be used to (1) scale key variables so they are useful for global models and (2) improve a new global climate model. In the final step, the improved global climate models will be run to quantify the impact of thawing permafrost on the global climate. Datasets produced in COUP will be freely available online so that they can be used by other scientists and help improvement of all global climate models. COUP is designed to maximise synergies with ongoing projects. Much of the needed data and system understanding was generated in other research programmes.