International Permafrost Association IPA. His appointment took place at the 9th International Conference on Permafrost in Fairbanks, Alaska. Prof. Hubberten will lead the International Permafrost Association [...] research on permafrost gains in importance”, explains Hubberten. Permanently frozen areas of the polar region and higher latitudes, which make up about 25% of the earth's surface, are called permafrost. “We have [...] greenhouse gases in tundra regions, material and energy flow in the permafrost as well as the climate and environmental history of Siberian permafrost regions.

Prof. Hubberten was appointed head of the Research

the factsheet "Permafrost", the team led by first author Dr Jens Strauss from AWI-Potsdam summarises the state of research on the global importance of permafrost carbon stocks. Permafrost is ground that [...] conditions typical of many permafrost regions limit decomposition processes.

The research team describes the distribution of permafrost regions, the potential for permafrost soils to absorb or release [...] Recent studies suggest that half of all global soil carbon is stored in the permafrost region. The organic material known as "permafrost carbon" is currently protected by cold climate conditions, but the latter

apparent scars in the world’s permafrost regions. As the new global comparative study conducted by the international permafrost network GTN-P shows, in all regions with permafrost soils the temperature of the [...] ago; as a result, in the most extreme cases, the permafrost continues to a depth of 1.6 kilometres. Especially in the Arctic, people rely on the permafrost soil as a stable foundation for houses, roads, [...] creating enormous costs. In addition, permafrost soils contain massive quantities of preserved plant and animal matter. If this organic material thaws along with the permafrost, microorganisms will begin breaking

the deep ocean.

Permafrost soil contains, to some extent, very old organic material, which is released in the form of the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane when the soil thaws. Permafrost soil thus might [...] CO2 release due to the proposed thawing of permafrost will be substantially less than the input due to fossil fuels. However, these emissions from permafrost soil are additional greenhouse gas sources [...] during the onset of the Bølling/Allerød warm period – presumably had their origin in thawing Arctic permafrost soil and amplified the initial warming through positive feedback. The study now appears online

in this way reinforced the thawing of the permafrost soil down to great depths.

This process had direct impacts on the climate in the Arctic: “When the permafrost thaws and such a lake forms, the microbes [...] thousand years. “A phenomenon that frequently occurs in permafrost regions and leads to freezing of the then exposed lake sediments. New permafrost is formed which encloses all plant remains and thus also [...] of the role of permafrost in the global carbon cycle, it can also help us to further develop computer models in such a way that they better forecast the feedback effects between permafrost changes and climate

employed a geochemical method used in glacier research to decode climate data from millennia-old permafrost ground ice and reconstruct the development of winter temperatures in Russia’s Lena River Delta [...] Delta. Their conclusions: Over the past 7,000 years, winter temperatures in the Siberian permafrost regions have gradually risen. The researchers claim that this is due to the changing position of the Earth [...] plains. Rather, it forms directly underground as ice wedges.

“Ice wedges are a typical feature of permafrost regions. They are formed when the permanently frozen soil contracts in response to intensively

the shelves were flooded. As a result, part of the permafrost remains today and has been dubbed submarine permafrost. 

Abrupt, regional permafrost thawing

Although the researchers believe the depletion [...] end of this century.

Thawing permafrost in climate models

The permafrost researchers’ goal is now to integrate their findings into climate models; to date, permafrost-related processes have received [...] Therefore, if the global mean temperature continues to rise, permafrost could release more greenhouse gases,” explains Dr Guido Grosse, a permafrost researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre

quantity and quality of carbon in permafrost soils in Siberia and Alaska.

"This research subject is highly topical since the large carbon reserves in the permafrost soils and their partial release [...] the quantity of deep permafrost carbon are essential contributions for a better understanding of the global carbon cycle which makes Strauss highly sought-after in the permafrost carbon community, leading [...] Award
Permafrost researcher Dr Jens Strauss, AWI Potsdam, was awarded "Young Scientist 2015". With this award the chairmen of the Friends' Association acknowledge the researcher's outstanding achievements

first online data portal on global permafrost. In the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (www.gtnp.org) researchers first collect all the existing permafrost temperature and active thickness layer [...] Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), scientists from 25 countries have now filled this gap in the data.

“If we want to understand the extent to which climate change is causing the permafrost to thaw and the [...] Prof. Hugues Lantuit, Permafrost Expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).

Researchers measured the temperature of the permafrost by boring a hole in

understand the physical processes in the permafrost soil and to be able to predict more precisely the future development of the permanently frozen regions.

The permafrost regions of the Arctic have been in [...] if the permafrost even disappears completely, the bacteria can also decompose the remains which have been stored in the deep frozen soils for thousands of years. This fact makes the permafrost soils a [...] it heats up and the greater the probability that the temperature in regions with permafrost will rise and the permafrost soils will thaw even more expansively. In this case, scientists speak of a “positive