Thawing permafrost in the Arctic is releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at rates that current climate models struggle to predict. This project aims to close that gap by quantifying exactly how much methane is escaping from permafrost wetlands in Canada, Fennoscandia, and western Siberia. The problem is a critical blind spot in climate science. Atmospheric methane concentrations have risen sharply in recent decades, and thawing permafrost is a suspected driver—but hard data linking the two is scarce. Without knowing how much methane these wetlands emit now, and how those emissions will change under warmer, higher-CO₂ conditions, global climate predictions remain incomplete. If successful, the research will produce regional maps of methane emissions over the past two decades, built from satellite data, drone surveys, and ground measurements. Growth-room experiments simulating future climates will reveal how changing vegetation alters emissions. The result will be a spatially explicit understanding of the key processes controlling methane fluxes—information needed for realistic climate predictions and for designing effective mitigation actions. This is fundamental science with a direct bearing on how governments and international bodies set emissions targets and plan for warming.
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Climate warming is thawing permafrost in polar regions resulting in increased methane (CH4) emissions and as CH4 is a potent greenhouse gas, this exacerbates climate warming and its associated impacts. Additionally, rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations can cause increased CH4 emissions via altered plant soil interactions. Increasing CH4 emissions from thawing permafrost has been suggested as one of the drivers of the strong increase in atmospheric CH4 concentrations during recent decades and is expected to become an even stronger emitter of CH4 this century. However, data that quantifies CH4 emitted from tundra landscapes is limited - both the area of permafrost wetlands that are thawing and the resulting regional increases in CH4 emissions requires investigation urgently. This project is designed to quantify how permafrost thaw has contributed to rising atmospheric CH4 concentrations and to predict how these emissions will change in the future. One of the project targets is to use satellite measured atmospheric CH4 data to generate maps of CH4 emissions through time. To evaluate these in the context of ground measurements and permafrost thaw, we will compare them to up-scaled data of ground and drone-based measurement of CH4, as well as to regional estimates of areas affected by permafrost thaw using satellite data capture of the land surface. To predict how CH4 emissions may change under future warmer and higher CO2 conditions, growth room experiments mimicking future climate conditions will be used to determine how vegetation responses to these new conditions impacts CH4 emissions. In combination with detailed vegetation maps from drones and satellite data, this data will be extrapolated to the landscape to quantify CH4 emission associated with vegetation responses to future climate scenarios. The geographical focus of the research activities will be regions with large expanses of permafrost wetlands in Fennoscandia, Canada and Russia. Field work (ground and drone measurements) will be carried out in Sweden and Canada only, while the satellite data analysis will enable us to carry out work on the extensive permafrost wetland areas in Canada, Fennoscandia as well as west Siberia. The satellite data used for the research is freely available from the European Space Agency and the project team has all the relevant skills to process the data to generate the outputs needed and integrating the satellite data with the field and experimental data. The main outputs from this project will be: (i) regional estimates of permafrost thaw and CH4 emissions from permafrost wetlands and (ii) spatially explicit quantitative understanding of key processes controlling current and future CH4 fluxes from permafrost wetlands. Taken together this project will deliver quantification of the contribution of permafrost wetlands to global atmospheric CH4 concentrations over the last two decades and an assessment of the vulnerability of these to future climate warming. This information is needed for realistic global climate predictions and underpins climate mitigation actions.
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