Research project CLIMPEAT | Northern Peatlands in the face of climate warming and abrupt changes
Gustaf Hugelius, together with Christina Biasi, University of Innsbruck, Pierre Friedlingstein, University of Exeter, and Philippe Ciais, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat – CEA, leads a project to investigate how peatlands in the northern hemisphere responds to climate change and future warming.
These peatlands contain huge amounts of carbon and nitrogen, which, if released, could amplify global warming making climate stabilisation targets significantly harder to meet than current models predict. The researchers will draw on expertise from many different scientific fields to create detailed maps showing the properties that make peatlands particularly vulnerable to climate change. The researchers will also conduct the most extensive field experiment to date, in which frozen peatlands in northern Finland will be thawed and monitored. By combining large amounts of data from field sampling and satellites with AI, new models will be constructed and used to recreate past and future changes in northern peatlands. All with the aim to improve our understanding of how these areas affect the global climate.