Snow thermal conductivity controls future winter carbon emissions in shrub–tundra

Rutherford, Johnny; Rutter, Nick; Wake, Leanne; Cannon, Alex J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-5031-2025

Articles | Volume 22, issue 18

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-5031-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-5031-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 18

Research article

|

29 Sep 2025

Research article |

| 29 Sep 2025

Snow thermal conductivity controls future winter carbon emissions in shrub–tundra

Johnny Rutherford, Nick Rutter, Leanne Wake, and Alex J. Cannon

Data sets

Jruthers/paper1: Release 1 J. Rutherford https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17095509

Bias-corrected NA-CORDEX projections for Trail Valley Creek, NWT, Canada A. Cannon https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17112930

A 885 hydro-meterological dataset from the taiga-tundra ecotone in the western Canadian Arctic: Trail Valley Creek, Northwest Territories R. Tutton et al. https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/BXV4DE

Short summary

The Arctic winter is vulnerable to climate warming, and ~1700 Gt of carbon stored in high-latitude permafrost ecosystems is at risk of degradation in the future due to enhanced microbial activity. Poorly represented cold season processes, such as the simulation of snow thermal conductivity in land surface models (LSMs), cause uncertainty in projected carbon emission simulations. Improved snow conductivity parameterization in CLM5.0 significantly increases predicted winter CO₂ emissions to 2100.