GREENHOUSE GAS FLUXES AND EARTH SYSTEM FEEDBACKS

Project Information

GreenFeedBack

Grant agreement ID: 101056921

DOI

10.3030/101056921

Project closed

EC signature date 12 May 2022

Start date 1 July 2022

End date 30 June 2026

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 8 151 049,50

EU contribution

€ 8 151 049,50

Coordinated by

AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GreenFeedBack (GREENHOUSE GAS FLUXES AND EARTH SYSTEM FEEDBACKS)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Enhanced knowledge and verification of GHG exchange and feedback mechanisms from both managed and natural ecosystems are crucial for planning mitigation and adaptation strategies, and to become climate neutral in the future. Many elements of the climate system, such as terrestrial ecosystems, ocean circulation, atmosphere-ocean gas exchanges, coastal zones, and their biogeochemical cycles, have an important influence on climate change and its impacts, but are not sufficiently understood by the latest science. There are especially large gaps in our knowledge of GHG fluxes at high latitudes where the warming occurs three times faster than the rest of the world, and the Arctic Ocean (AO) is notably becoming warmer and less saline due to the increase of riverine/glacier discharge. To move forward, it is essential to understand these high latitude GHG life cycles from a holistic perspective.
The overall objective of GreenFeedBack is to enhance our understanding of key processes of the GHG exchange between the atmosphere and the Arctic ecosystems, the connection between the ecosystems, and the impacts from human pressures. The work will be carried out in co-design workshops strengthening the uptake of research in society. From these studies we will advance the representation of GHG processes in ecosystems in existing Earth System Models taking human pressures into account, allowing for more certain climate change projections from which climate mitigation and adaptation strategies can be evaluated. We will assess the global feedback and effect on extreme events on the climate system, using the advanced Earth System Models. The outcomes will be communicated and disseminated through media coverage, public lectures and stakeholder workshops enhancing the societal awareness of the human impact on the GHG cycle and feedbacks.
Results from GreenFeedBack will raise policy-makers’ and society’s awareness of effects from human pressures, as well as extreme events on the GHG feedbacks. In the longer-term, GreenFeedBack will, through its outcomes and interaction with policy-makers and stakeholders, therefore contribute to a transition to a climate-neutral and resilient society enabled through advanced climate science, pathways and responses to climate change and behavioral transformations.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first project period we have focused on the impact from human pressures using co-design workshops. Two workshops and 20 interview groups have been conducted during the reporting period, one in Andøya, Norway and one in Oulu, Finland. The workshop design was made in close collaboration between all research fields, to ensure that the data retrieved will be applicable not only to understanding the key GHG cycle processes, including impacts of human pressures, but also to produce the human footprint maps and a report on climate regulating services, and hereby getting a more holistic understanding and input.
Data from high latitude GHG flux measurement sites has contributed to the creation of the human pressure mapping for terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. These pressure maps will continuously be used in the project to quantify and attribute the human pressure impacts on regional GHG-balance and climate regulating services. The data from the high latitude sites are also being analysed to identify weather extremes and anomalous behavior at these sites.
Some of the infrastructures we are using for the study of the GHG flux processes have been upgraded in order to obtain more detailed information about parameters. The ICOS Station at Lake Kuivajärvi has been renewed in Fall 2023, and a new mobile platform (small boat) for air-water gas exchange measurements has been established. Some of the marine infrastructures have been upgraded in order to enhance the understanding of the GHG air-sea flux. The measurement infrastructure at Daneborg, Young Sound in Greenland has been upgraded with CH4 flux instrumentation and the infrastructure at Nuuk, Kobbefjord has been upgraded with an underwater CO2 mooring. The new Tvärminne ICOS Station in Finland has been established including CO2 and CH4 flux measurements.
Work on adding and improving the formulations of the terrestrial ecosystem models has been initiated. The focus has been on processes particularly important for Arctic and boreal ecosystems such as including/improving representation of shrubs and peatlands, vegetation dynamics, nutrient cycling, snow-vegetation feedbacks, and soil thermal processes. A spatially resolved hydrological model has been implemented to a sub-arctic near-pristine catchment in Northern Finland to improve our understanding and capacity to predict how landscape structure and weather conditions affect soil moisture.
For the marine modelling we have made significant progress in understanding the impact of an Estuary Box Model on the climate system using the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Earth System Model version 2. This implementation aimed at enhancing the representation of river runoff and estuarine processes. Multiple century-long simulations, underscores the importance of accurately parameterizing freshwater discharge in ocean models, especially considering its impact on the global ocean thermocline and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
For the climate modelling we have set up the baseline version of the EC-Earth3 model in carbon cycle mode to be used as the reference against which novel implementations and sensitivity tests are compared. This is done as a special GreenFeedBack branch in the EC-Earth community code repository in order to ease integration into the main EC-Earth as we progress and encourage wider use of the results.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

A report on Climate regulating services is a main deliverable and result from the first 18 months of GreenFeedBack. The report is addressing a broad audience (high schools, general public and policy makers) and is planned to be presented at the Arctic Frontier meeting in January, 2025 and at the Greenland Science Week in November 2025.