DEFROST

Impacts of a changing cryosphere. Depicting ecosystem-climate feedbacks from permafrost, snow and ice.

DEFROST is part of the Top-level Research Initiative (TRI) and is one of the three Nordic Centres of Excellence that are funded within the sub-programme "Interactions between climate change and the cryosphere". The aim of DEFROST is to understand how climate change induced changes in the cryosphere (places where water is in its solid form, frozen into snow or ice) influence the ecosystem/geosphere processes which directly affect climate. DEFROST seeks to bridge existing gaps between climate modeling, cryospheric science, and Arctic ecosystem science.

Ice block in the Laptev Sea
Ice block in the Laptev Sea Foto Iréne Wåhlström

In the project, the Oceanography research department will implement flux parameterizations in a transient biogeochemical budget model developed for one of the main sites for DEFROST, the Laptev Sea in the Arctic Ocean. The emphasis is to estimate the air-sea exchange of methane in this area. A sensitivity test will be performed to investigate if and how the air-sea exchange of methane will change with different forcings.