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Quantifying Future Changes in High-Latitude Methane Emissions Under Regional Climate Change Uncertainty

Quantifying Future Changes in High-Latitude Methane Emissions Under Regional Climate Change Uncertainty
Type: 
Parallel
Time: 
17 March 2010 - 11:30am
Xiang Gao1, C. Adam Schlosser2, Katey Walter3, Eunjee Lee4
1MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA, xgao304 [at] mit [dot] edu
2MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA, casch [at] mit [dot] edu
3University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, USA, ftkmw1 [at] uaf [dot] edu
4MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, eunjee [at] mit [dot] edu

The arctic is a highly sensitive region to be profoundly affected by global warming and would likely experience greater warming than the rest of the world. One immediate consequence of climate change in the Arctic would likely be the widespread permafrost degradation and thus a strong increase in methane emission (via thermokarst lakes and /or wetland expansion). In this study, we attempt to quantify the future changes in the high latitude methane emission by forcing the community land model (CLM) with the climate projections from the fully-coupled MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) simulations of low, median and high climate sensitivity through the next century (2100). In order to take into account the regional uncertainty in climate change, the GPCP precipitation and CRU temperature are employed to project the zonal-based IGSM forcing data into the longitudinally gridded domain. The feasibility of such zonal-to-longitude projection will be validated with the offline CLM simulations forced by three other state-of-the-art meteorology datasets. Additional simulations will be performed through the 2100 to examine the impact of warming climate on the zonal-to-longitude projection coefficients and associated methane emission by imposing two distinct GCM patterns (warm and dry / cool and wet) from IPCC AR4 archive on the MIT IGSM climate projections. The research results from this study should help us better understand the change and future states of the high latitude methane emission and also provide useful insights on the potential climate feedback.

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National Science Foundation | Division of Arctic Sciences
National Science Foundation
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere
International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere
Study of Environmental Arctic Change
Study of Environmental Arctic Change
Arctic System Science Program
Arctic System Science Program
US Arctic Research Commission
US Arctic Research Commission
North Slope Science Initiative
North Slope Science Initiative
International Arctic Science Committee
International Arctic Science Committee
Arctic Ocean Sciences Board
Arctic Ocean Sciences Board
Alaska Ocean Observing System
Alaska Ocean Observing System
Department of Energy
Department of Energy
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
World Wildlife Fund
WWF
Association of Polar Early Career Scientists
Association of Polar Early Career Scientists
Bureau of Land Management
Bureau of Land Management
International Study of Arctic Change
International Study of Arctic Change
ArcticNet
ArcticNet
DAMOCLES
Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the ARCUS Cooperative Agreement ARC-0618885. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.