A chapter of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 2024 Arctic Report Card, published today, presents a new, comprehensive pan-Arctic carbon assessment that, when accounting for wildfire emissions, finds that the Arctic tundra has shifted from storing carbon to being a source of carbon emissions to the atmosphere.
While the Arctic has been a carbon “sink” for thousands of years—storing more carbon than it releases—the Arctic Report Card chapter, Arctic Terrestrial Carbon Cycling, explores how rapid Arctic warming is prompting a range of ecosystem changes that are leading to increased emissions throughout the region. Among these are thawing permafrost (perennially frozen ground), wildfires, and plant and microbial changes.
In particular, the assessment, led by scientists at Woodwell Climate Research Center, finds that 2024 marked the second-warmest average yearly permafrost temperatures on record for Alaska, and the second-highest year for wildfire emissions north of the Arctic Circle.
“The Arctic is warming up to four times the global rate, and we need accurate, holistic, and comprehensive knowledge of how climate changes will affect the amount of carbon the Arctic is taking up and storing, and how much it’s releasing back into the atmosphere, in order to effectively address this crisis,” said Dr. Sue Natali, Woodwell Climate scientist, chapter lead and lead of Woodwell Climate’s Permafrost Pathways project. “This report represents a critical step toward quantifying these emissions at scale which is critical for understanding their impacts on global climate and informing equitable mitigation and adaptation strategies.”
“In recent years, we’ve seen how increasing fire activity from climate change threatens both communities and the carbon stored in permafrost, but now we’re beginning to be able to measure the cumulative impact to the atmosphere, and it’s significant,” said Dr. Brendan Rogers, Woodwell Climate scientist, chapter co-author, and co-lead of Woodwell Climate’s Permafrost Pathways project.
“This year’s report demonstrates the urgent need for adaptation as climate conditions quickly change,” said Twila Moon, lead editor of the 2024 Arctic Report Card and deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Indigenous Knowledge and community-led research programs can inform successful responses to rapid Arctic changes.”
Contributions to the chapter were also made by Woodwell Climate scientists, Dr. Kyle Arndt, Dr. Jacqueline Hung, Greg Fiske, Stefano Potter, and Dr. Anna Virkkala, as well as collaborators at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Northern Arizona University, and Université de Montréal.
The Arctic Report Card combines the best available research from over 97 scientists from 11 countries, including seven from Woodwell Climate. Its chapters reveal record-setting observations of a rapidly warming Arctic, including rising air temperatures, declines of large inland caribou herds, and increasing precipitation. These climate impacts and others threaten the health, subsistence, and homes of many Indigenous communities living in the Arctic.
The full Arctic Report Card can be read here.
Air quality monitoring to machine learning: Fund for Climate Solutions awards six new grants
The second round of 2024 Fund for Climate Solutions (FCS) awardees has been announced. The FCS advances innovative, solutions-oriented climate science through a competitive, internal, and cross-disciplinary funding process. Generous donor support has enabled us to raise more than $10 million towards the FCS, funding 69 research grants since 2018. The latest cohort of grantees includes three projects focused on driving impact through collaboration and community-building, and three projects exploring new horizons in technology with timely policy relevance.
Arctic wildfire pollutants: Towards improving emissions estimates and developing tribally-led monitoring
Lead: Scott Zolkos
Collaborators: Brendan Rogers, Sue Natali, Kyle Arndt, Elise Sunderland (Harvard University)
Increasing wildfire activity in northern high-latitude regions is threatening global climate goals and public health. When organic matter in soils and vegetation burns, greenhouse gasses, fine particulates (PM2.5), and contaminants including mercury are released to the environment. Currently, there is sparse data for understanding how wildfires contribute to the northern mercury cycle, as well as gaps in infrastructure for monitoring PM2.5 in Alaska Native communities. This project will develop a network to measure and monitor the release of mercury and PM2.5 from wildfire, with an emphasis on peatlands. Leveraging ongoing work by Permafrost Pathways, the team will install mercury sampling equipment on existing eddy covariance flux towers across Alaska and Canada. Alongside Permafrost Pathways and their tribal partners, the team will also consult with Alaska Native communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to co-develop a tribally-led air quality monitoring program.
Workshop: Innovative sensors and applications in environmental research
Lead: Kathleen Savage
Collaborators: Zoë Dietrich, Marcia Macedo
Many of the Woods Hole science community’s cutting-edge researchers, including several scientists at Woodwell Climate, are developing creative, do-it-yourself (DIY) tools using relatively simple components to further explore their research questions. However, despite the six institutions’ similar applications and geographic proximity, there are few opportunities for exchange and knowledge, both across Woods Hole institutions and more broadly with Cape Cod educational institutions. The project team will convene a one-day workshop to bring together aquatic, atmospheric, and terrestrial science researchers and educators from the Woods Hole science community and local community colleges. The event will focus on three main themes: development of new sensor systems that use existing technologies in novel ways; new data storage or transmission solutions; and community initiatives to facilitate continued creation and sharing of new technologies. Sessions will foster knowledge exchange, build networks, and develop community resources focused on innovative DIY research solutions, and a hybrid virtual option will be offered for oral presentations to broaden participation.
Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good network
Lead: José Lucas Safanelli
Collaborators: Jonathan Sanderman
The Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good (SS4GG) initiative is a collaborative network of hundreds of soil scientists and others focused on using soil spectroscopy as a means to generate high-quality soil data at significantly reduced costs. It was created in 2020 by the Woodwell Climate Research Center, the University of Florida, and the OpenGeoHub Foundation (the Netherlands) with support from many national and international institutions and researchers. SS4GG created and supports the Open Soil Spectral Library (OSSL), an open source of soil spectroscopy data, and a broad community of practitioners uses the library and collaborates on related science. This award will extend the activities of the SS4GG initiative with a focus on training and further engagement with the soil science community. The project team will continue to add data sets and new models to the OSSL, as well as engage with the soil science community by attending international conferences and providing a training workshop. The funds will also support hosting a visiting soil biogeochemist at the Woodwell Climate campus—Dr. Raj Setia from the Punjab Remote Sensing Center.
Pathways of carbon metabolism under cover crops
Lead: Taniya RoyChowdhury
Collaborator: Jonathan Sanderman
Sequestering, or capturing carbon in soils has a high potential to mitigate climate change. It is challenging to specifically predict how successful carbon sequestration may be, as current models used to evaluate agronomic management oversimplify soil microbial properties. This project will test for the key pathways of carbon transformations using soil samples taken under cover crops from a long-term study site. The team will quantify the chemical diversity of carbon substrates that microbes in the soil take up, and use data mining to predict the impacts of that diversity on soil carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling. The research outcomes will also lay a foundation for future collaborative research within the Department of Energy scientific community, and the soil health research community more broadly.
Bringing confidence to carbon markets through improved monitoring
Lead: Seth Gorelik
Collaborator: Wayne Walker
The protection, improved management, and restoration of forests are key nature-based solutions to the climate crisis, yet implementation and maintenance of these forest-based solutions requires sustainable and substantial financing. The voluntary carbon market (VCM) has the potential to deliver the necessary level of financing; however, a significant gap exists between its potential and actual performance. Improving the accuracy of forest carbon monitoring is crucial for the VCM to deliver effective, meaningful climate change mitigation. This project will enhance the credibility and effectiveness of forest carbon markets by evaluating new remote sensing methods for measuring forest carbon and showing that these methods provide more robust data than the conventional approach. Research findings could lead to updated global standards and policies for issuing carbon credits, which would increase market confidence and promote sustainable forest management.
Applying machine learning models to link river hydrology and fire risk forecasting in the Amazon
Lead: Andrea D. de Almeida Castanho
Collaborators: Michael Coe, Marcia Macedo
In recent decades, extreme drought events have increased forest flammability, fire severity, and the likelihood of fire escaping and spreading into adjacent forests and working lands, as illustrated by the wildfires seen throughout Amazonia during the 2023-24 drought. The project team will explore the potential of using river stage (water level) data as a proxy for landscape dryness, to ultimately reveal the short-term risk of wildfires spreading into forests. If confirmed, this innovative hypothesis could provide the scientific basis for developing new metrics of river stage to improve early-warning systems that forecast high fire risk days to weeks in advance. These improvements would create benefits not only for tropical forest protection, but also for biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and human health.
