Abstract. Permafrost thaw disrupts ecosystems, hydrology, and biogeochemical cycles, reinforcing climate change through a positive permafrost-carbon feedback loop. Thaw can be gradual, deepening the a...

In Alaska verschwindet binnen Stunden ein See. Der Grund: tauender Permafrost. Forscher wollen nun wissen, wann das System kippen könnte und ganze Landschaften verändern.

‘As the storm approached Alaska, everything went sideways,’ leaving people no time to evacuate and little time to prepare. An Alaska meteorologist explains what happened and the challenges ahead.

Bering Land Bridge (BLB) climate and vegetation during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) remains largely understudied, given challenges associated with collecting records from the submerged BLB. Previ...

Driftwood plays a key role in Arctic coastal ecosystems: it stores carbon, stabilises coastlines and provides a habitat for animals. At the same time, it can offer clues regarding climate change in the Arctic region, providing information on the likes of storm surges, coastal erosion and shifting fluvial dynamics. Despite the crucial role it plays, there is still a lot that we do not know about the large-scale distribution patterns of driftwood. Now, for the first time, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have systematically mapped driftwood deposits along an 11,000 kilometre stretch of coastline in Alaska and North West Canada, using satellite imagery and AI-powered evaluation methods. The result is the largest database ever produced, with researchers able to identify over 19,000 stable driftwood deposits. The findings will soon be published in the Scientific Reports journal.

Permafrost in der Arktis speichert große Mengen an organischem Kohlenstoff in gefrorenen Böden und tieferen Ablagerungen. Doch die Arktis erwärmt sich besonders schnell und lässt diese Speicher auftauen. Die Folge: Immer mehr Treibhausgase aus den Böden gelangen in die Atmosphäre. Wo und wie schnell Permafrost auftaut, ist erst wenig erforscht, ebenso wie die Prozesse, die das Tauwetter antreiben. Das internationale Projekt PeTCaT will insbesondere die Wissenslücken um schnelle Tauprozesse schließen. Unter der Leitung des Alfred-Wegener-Instituts werden Forschende aus Deutschland, den USA, Kanada, den Niederlanden und Schweden einen neuartigen Datensatz aufbauen, mit dem sie die möglichen Entwicklungen und Einflüsse von Treibhausgasen aus tauendem Permafrost projizieren können. Gefördert wird das Projekt von der gemeinnützigen Organisation Schmidt Sciences.

PDF | New regional-scale ground ice modelling for the Mackenzie Valley and Delta regions, based on surficial geology aligned with the Geological Survey... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...

Long-buried layers of saline permafrost seem to be accelerating climate change's transformation of the Arctic

Scientific Reports - Large driftwood accumulations along arctic coastlines and rivers

The streams of Alaska’s Brooks Range lie within a vast (~14M ha) tract of protected wilderness and have long supported both resident and anadromous...

Image segmentation enables landscape-scale mapping of permafrost degradation stages based on their texture in panchromatic imagery Convolutional Neural Networks outperform feature-based Random Fo...

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere vary naturally between ice ages and interglacial periods. A new study by researchers at the University of Gothenburg shows that an unexpectedly large proportion...

How much methane will be emitted from the boreal-Arctic region under climate change is not well constrained. Here the authors show that accounting for distinct wetland and lake classes leads to lower ...

ANCHORAGE — Federal agencies spend billions on roads and energy systems in Alaska, but nothing on fish camps and traditional trails that Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer calls “Indigenous infrastructure” — t...