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Frans-Jan Parmentier

Frans-Jan Parmentier

Associate professor

Frans-Jan Parmentier

Methane emission bursts from permafrost environments during autumn freeze-in: New insights from ground-penetrating radar

Author

  • Norbert Pirk
  • Telmo Santos
  • Carl Gustafson
  • Anders J Johansson
  • Fredrik Tufvesson
  • Frans-Jan Parmentier
  • Mikhail Mastepanov
  • Torben Christensen

Summary, in English

Large amounts of methane (CH4) are known to be emitted from permafrost environments during the autumn freeze-in, but the specific soil conditions leading up to these bursts are unclear. Therefore, we used an ultrawide band ground-penetrating radar in Northeast Greenland in autumn 2009 to estimate the volumetric composition inside the soil through dielectric characterization from 200 to 3200 MHz. Our results suggest a compression of the gas reservoir during the phase transition of soil water, which is accompanied by a peak in surface CH4 emissions. About 1 week thereafter, there seems to be a decompression event, consistent with ground cracking which allows the gas reservoir to expand again. This coincides with the largest CH4 emission, exceeding the summer maximum by a factor of 4. We argue that these complementary measurement techniques are needed to come to an understanding of tundra CH4 bursts connected to soil freezing.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • Department of Electrical and Information Technology
  • Neuronano Research Center (NRC)
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • ELLIIT: the Linköping-Lund initiative on IT and mobile communication

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

6732-6738

Publication/Series

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

42

Issue

16

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Topic

  • Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
  • Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

Keywords

  • ground-penetrating radar
  • Greenland
  • autumn freeze-in
  • methane
  • frequency domain

Status

Published

Research group

  • Neuronano Research Center (NRC)

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1944-8007