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A mechanistic understanding of Arctic River Methane Emissions

Project description

Quantifying Arctic river methane emissions and developing mechanistic models

Methane (CH4) is much more powerful at trapping heat than CO2, with an 84-fold greater global warming potential on a 100-year timescale. This makes understanding CH4 sources and sinks critical to climate predictions. The Arctic is an important source of CH4 emissions, but river emissions are particularly uncertain. The emissions are very sensitive to climate and likely to increase dramatically in the near future. However, process-based models of river CH4 emissions are lacking, in large part due to lack of data, making quantified predictions challenging. The ERC-funded ARIMETH project aims to conduct a novel experiment and carry out remote field campaigns with sensors and isotope sampling, the data of which will inform mechanistic models of river CH4 emissions.

Objective

Constraining the global methane (CH4) budget is an urgent need to predict future climate. Rivers are an important source of CH4 to the atmosphere, with surprisingly high rates of emissions in northern regions. The high emissions from Arctic rivers are driven by lateral inputs from surrounding land and are very sensitive to climate, but challenging to assess. Given the severe impacts of ongoing climate change at high latitudes, CH4 emissions from Arctic rivers have a large potential to further increase, but we are unable to quantify and predict future emissions due to a lack of process-based models that represent river CH4 emissions. The limitation arises from our poor understanding of river Arctic CH4 cycling, with a clear lack of mechanistic studies that are foundational to advancing process-based models. ARIMETH aims to address this issue, by initially generating the mechanistic understanding of Arctic riverine CH4 cycling. Subsequently, the project will develop the modelling tools to predict current and future CH4 emissions. To achieve this goal, the project will conduct a comprehensive approach, including a whole-stream warming experiment, high-resolution measurements with state-of-the-art CH4 sensors coupled with remote sensing data, pan-Arctic sampling campaigns to find the sources of CH4 using carbon radioisotopes, and developing deep-learning mechanistic models for river CH4 emissions. The outcomes of ARIMETH will offer ground-breaking insights into river CH4 cycling, spanning from the river itself to the catchment, and to pan-Arctic scale. Finally, ARIMETH will determine if CH4 emissions from Arctic freshwaters are underestimated when lateral fluxes to rivers and emissions are not accounted for. This is critical to predict future trajectories of global warming, as well as discover unrecognised feedbacks between the terrestrial-aquatic-atmospheric compartments in the broad carbon cycle.

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG

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Host institution

UMEA UNIVERSITET
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 902 360,00
Address
UNIVERSITETOMRADET
901 87 UMEA
Sweden

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Region
Norra Sverige Övre Norrland Västerbottens län
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 902 360,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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