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Permafrost carbon as a missing link to explain CO2 changes during the last deglaciation

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 30 September 2016

This article has been updated

Abstract

The atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased from 190 to 280 ppm between the last glacial maximum 21,000 years ago and the pre-industrial era1,2. This CO2 rise and its timing have been linked to changes in the Earth’s orbit, ice sheet configuration and volume, and ocean carbon storage2,3. The ice-core record of δ13CO2 (refs 2,4) in the atmosphere can help to constrain the source of carbon, but previous modelling studies have failed to capture the evolution of δ13CO2 over this period5. Here we show that simulations of the last deglaciation that include a permafrost carbon component can reproduce the ice core records between 21,000 and 10,000 years ago. We suggest that thawing permafrost, due to increasing summer insolation in the northern hemisphere, is the main source of CO2 rise between 17,500 and 15,000 years ago, a period sometimes referred to as the Mystery Interval6. Together with a fresh water release into the North Atlantic, much of the CO2 variability associated with the Bølling-Allerod/Younger Dryas period 15,000 to 12,000 years ago can also be explained. In simulations of future warming we find that the permafrost carbon feedback increases global mean temperature by 10–40% relative to simulations without this feedback, with the magnitude of the increase dependent on the evolution of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

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Figure 1: Model drivers and settings for the deglaciation simulations.
Figure 2: Evolution of atmospheric CO2, δ13CO2 and Northern Hemisphere temperature in model and data.
Figure 3: Evolution of ocean δ13C in model and data.

Change history

  • 06 September 2016

    The original version of this Letter contained a typographical error in the final sentence of the first paragraph in the main text. This sentence should have read 'The ratio, described by its δ13CO2 value7, is strongly affected by the exchange of carbon between the biosphere and the atmosphere because photosynthesis preferentially takes up 12C, resulting in a low δ13C in biosphere-derived carbon, at a mean value around –25‰ (ref. 8).' This has been corrected in all the online versions of this Letter.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) under Grant 238366 (GREENCYCLES II) and under grant GA282700 (PAGE21, 2011-2015). D.M.R. is supported by INSU-CNRS and by NWO under project no. 864.09.013.

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Contributions

K.A.C. carried out the study and interpreted data, building on work from N.B. and D.M.R. for the deglaciation period, K.A.C. designed the fresh water forcing experiments. All authors contributed to writing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to K. A. Crichton.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Crichton, K., Bouttes, N., Roche, D. et al. Permafrost carbon as a missing link to explain CO2 changes during the last deglaciation. Nature Geosci 9, 683–686 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2793

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