Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems
Permafrost carbon represents a potentially powerful amplifier of climate change, but little is known about permafrost sensitivity and associated carbon cycling during past warm intervals. We reconstruct permafrost history in western Canada during Pleistocene interglacials from 130 uranium-thorium ag...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 |
| _version_ | 1826210054130368512 |
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| author | Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard |
| author_sort | Biller-Celander, Nicole |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Permafrost carbon represents a potentially powerful amplifier of climate change, but little is known about permafrost sensitivity and associated carbon cycling during past warm intervals. We reconstruct permafrost history in western Canada during Pleistocene interglacials from 130 uranium-thorium ages on 72 speleothems, cave deposits that only accumulate with deep ground thaw. We infer that permafrost thaw extended to the high Arctic during one or more periods between ~1.5 million and 0.5 million years ago but has been limited to the sub-Arctic since 400,000 years ago. Our Canadian speleothem growth history closely parallels an analogous reconstruction from Siberia, suggesting that this shift toward more stable permafrost across the Pleistocene may have been Arctic-wide. In contrast, interglacial greenhouse gas concentrations were relatively stable throughout the Pleistocene, suggesting that either permafrost thaw did not trigger substantial carbon release to the atmosphere or it was offset by carbon uptake elsewhere on glacial-interglacial time scales. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:41:04Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/132651 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:41:04Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1326512022-10-01T22:04:04Z Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Permafrost carbon represents a potentially powerful amplifier of climate change, but little is known about permafrost sensitivity and associated carbon cycling during past warm intervals. We reconstruct permafrost history in western Canada during Pleistocene interglacials from 130 uranium-thorium ages on 72 speleothems, cave deposits that only accumulate with deep ground thaw. We infer that permafrost thaw extended to the high Arctic during one or more periods between ~1.5 million and 0.5 million years ago but has been limited to the sub-Arctic since 400,000 years ago. Our Canadian speleothem growth history closely parallels an analogous reconstruction from Siberia, suggesting that this shift toward more stable permafrost across the Pleistocene may have been Arctic-wide. In contrast, interglacial greenhouse gas concentrations were relatively stable throughout the Pleistocene, suggesting that either permafrost thaw did not trigger substantial carbon release to the atmosphere or it was offset by carbon uptake elsewhere on glacial-interglacial time scales. NSF (Grants ARC-1607816 and 1607968) 2021-09-27T18:05:23Z 2021-09-27T18:05:23Z 2021-04 2020-08 2021-09-17T14:41:31Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2375-2548 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 Biller-Celander, Nicole et al. "Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems." Science Advances 7, 18 (April 2021): eabe5799. © 2021 The Authors en http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5799 Science Advances Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ application/pdf American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Advances |
| spellingShingle | Biller-Celander, Nicole Shakun, Jeremy D. McGee, David Wong, Corinne I. Reyes, Alberto V. Hardt, Ben Tal, Irit Ford, Derek C. Lauriol, Bernard Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
| title | Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
| title_full | Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
| title_fullStr | Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
| title_full_unstemmed | Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
| title_short | Increasing Pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from Canadian speleothems |
| title_sort | increasing pleistocene permafrost persistence and carbon cycle conundrums inferred from canadian speleothems |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132651 |
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