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Understanding and Modelling Wetland CH4 Emissions in the Boreal Arctic Region during the Past Two Decades

Presentation Date
Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 11:15am - Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 11:30am
Location
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center - 221
Authors

Author

Abstract

Methane (CH4) emissions from the Boreal-Arctic wetlands significantly contribute to the global CH4 budget and are highly sensitive to climate change. Significant warming has been observed in the high latitude region during the past decades, nearly four times faster than the global average. However, the response of the Boreal-Arctic wetland CH4 emissions to such a changing environment remains unclear. Limitations in people's understanding of dominant processes of wetland CH4 emissions and insufficient ground observations, especially in the wetland hotspots, lead to large uncertainties and discrepancies among different process-based bottom-up and top-down models. In this study, we compiled a large in-situ observational dataset, including 139 and 168 site years of eddy covariance and chamber measurements, and generated an upscaling dataset of Boreal Arctic wetland CH4 emissions from 2002 to 2021 using a data-driven causality-guided machine learning model. The generated upscaling dataset revealed a significant increasing trend, dominated by the CH4 emission increase during the boreal summer (~76%). Such CH4 increase was mainly driven by warming and greening, contributing over 90% to the CH4 changing trend. We also found a peak emission in 2016, surpassing two standard deviations above the 2002-2021 average, triggered by the anomalously high temperature (~2°C) over the Boreal Arctic area. Furthermore, we also discussed the uncertainties caused by model parameters, wetland inundated areas, and input forcing datasets.

Category
39th Conference on Hydrology
Funding Program Area(s)
Additional Resources:
NERSC (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center)