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Thursday, November 29, 2018. 2:00PM. Towards understanding the dynamics of permafrost carbon under climate change. Charles Koven, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Sponsored by NOAA GFDL. More information here.

Permafrost-affected soils make up the largest pool of organic carbon in the terrestrial system. Because the preservation of carbon in these soils is fundamentally tied to their thermal state, permafrost may be highly vulnerable to warming and act as a strong carbon-climate feedback. However permafrost has also been one of the last aspects of the terrestrial carbon cycle to be incorporated into ESMs. I’ll discuss approaches to representing the physical and biogeochemical dynamics of permafrost in models, observational constraints on permafrost models, and how incorporating permafrost dynamics affects predictions of feedbacks in the Earth system.