University of Alberta researchers looking to quantify climate change impact of carbon released from permafrost

Researchers at the University of Alberta are looking to pull back the veil on how much carbon from melting permafrost is contributing to climate change. 

“The purpose of this research is to just give us a sense of where we stand,” Suzanne Tank, a biological sciences professor at the university, said in an interview with CBC News.

U of A researchers will play a key role in Canada as part of a global research project trying to better understand where permafrost thaw is likely to be most rapid. The initiative is also quantifying carbon and organic matter in northern soils and how it is dispersed in order to look at measuring carbon dioxide emissions. 

A researcher who worked on an international study on permafrost and climate change that was released in 2022, said at the time that the thawing of the frozen ground could contribute the same amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as a large industrial nation by the end of the century.

“There have been studies that have looked at this at relatively small scales,” said Tank, who is the Canada Research Chair in Land-Ocean Biogeochemistry.

“This ability … to extrapolate and understand how the Arctic is changing as a whole, is … it's a big challenge, right? And so [it] requires this interdisciplinary approach.”

Nearly half of Canada is covered in permafrost, which is a dense layer of soil and sediment that remains frozen for years.

Permafrost serves as the foundation for a lot of infrastructure in the North, like homes and roads. 

The ground and ice also holds thousands of years worth of microorganisms and carbon, and as permafrost thaws in our warming climate, it releases that carbon which in turn feeds into climate change. 

But we don’t yet definitively know how much carbon is being released.

Non-profit organization Schmidt Sciences has backed the research efforts by contributing $1 million to the U of A unit to lead the Canadian team that’s part of a $45-million international effort to look at how the global carbon cycle drives climate change.

The global carbon cycle looks at how carbon moves between the atmosphere, oceans and the land, which includes permafrost. 

The fieldwork in Canada will focus on permafrost landscapes in and around the Mackenzie Delta, the central Mackenzie Valley, Fort Simpson, Norman Wells and Yellowknife. 

In addition to those from the U of A, researchers are from the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, the Aurora Research Institute and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.