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Nature Climate Change (2024)
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Arctic permafrost, the largest non-seasonal component of Earth’s cryosphere, contains a substantial climate-sensitive carbon pool. The existence of a global tipping point, a warming threshold beyond which permafrost thaw would accelerate and become self-perpetuating, remains debated. Here we provide an integrative Perspective on this question, suggesting that despite several permafrost-thaw feedbacks driving rapid thaw and irreversible ground-ice loss at local to regional scales, the accumulated response of Arctic permafrost to climate warming remains quasilinear. We argue that in the absence of a global tipping point there is no safety margin within which permafrost loss would be acceptable. Instead, each increment of global warming subjects more land areas underlain by permafrost to thaw, causing detrimental local impacts and global feedbacks.
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This work is not based on original data.
The computer code and input data used for the geospatial analyses (Figs. 1 and 4) is deposited at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8366476 (ref. 134).
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J.N., T.S.v.D. and M.L. acknowledge funding through the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research project PermaRisk (grant no. 01LN1709A). J.N. acknowledges funding through the AWI INSPIRES programme. G.G. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 project Arctic Passion (grant no. 101003472) and the ESA CCI+ Permafrost initiative. S.M.S. acknowledges funding through the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research project MOMENT (grant no. 03F0931B). We gratefully acknowledge the creation of illustrations by Y. Nowak (AWI Communication and Media).
Permafrost Research Section, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany
Jan Nitzbon, Thomas Schneider von Deimling, Mehriban Aliyeva, Guido Grosse, Sebastian Laboor, Simone M. Stuenzi & Moritz Langer
Paleoclimate Dynamics Section, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
Jan Nitzbon, Gerrit Lohmann & Martin Werner
Mathematics and Statistics, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Sarah E. Chadburn
Institute of Geosciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Guido Grosse
Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Hanna Lee
Department of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Gerrit Lohmann
NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS, Bergen, Norway
Norman J. Steinert
CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway
Norman J. Steinert
Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Sebastian Westermann
Centre for Biogeochemistry in the Anthropocene, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Sebastian Westermann
Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Moritz Langer
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J.N., T.S.v.D. and M.L. conceived the idea of the paper. J.N. led the preparation of the paper, created the figures and conducted geospatial analyses. G.G., N.J.S. and S.M.S. led the writing of individual subsections. M.A., S.E.C. and S.L. conducted geospatial analyses and mapping. G.L., M.W. and M.L. secured funding. All authors discussed the contents and contributed to the writing and editing of the paper.
Correspondence to Jan Nitzbon.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Climate Change thanks David Armstrong McKay, Elchin Jafarov, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Nitzbon, J., Schneider von Deimling, T., Aliyeva, M. et al. No respite from permafrost-thaw impacts in the absence of a global tipping point. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02011-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02011-4
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