Simone Stuenzi, @smstuenzi.bsky.social, postdoc at the EOLab, and colleagues from @awi.de, @vuamsterdam.bsky.social and @uio.no, use process-based permafrost modeling, satellite time-series, and field data to study canopy-ground thermal dynamics, addressing a blind spot in Earth system models.
Guido Grosse
@grosseguido.bsky.social
Permafrost researcher and curious Arctic explorer, observer of rapid change. Spent some years in Alaska and Siberia, now at AWI Potsdam.
How do trees keep permafrost frozen? Research by @smstuenzi.bsky.social shows forest cover cools the ground surface and can reduce active layer thickness by up to 60 percent compared to open ground. The forest canopy regulates ground temperature through complex, multi-directional processes.
We have a new paper out in Nature Climate Change by @smstuenzi.bsky.social on Boreal Forest - #Permafrost interactions and its role in carbon cycling. Here wrapped in a great story map how this matters for climate change:
Beneath the tundra and forests of the Arctic lies permafrost: ground frozen year-round. @smstuenzi.bsky.social's research focuses on how boreal forests and permafrost interact, and what happens when that relationship breaks down. Read all about it in this new StoryMap! arcg.is/18Wa810
Here are some (n)ice wedge polygons on Prince Patrick Island, Canada
Permafrost is the most exceptional archive of natural history on Earth, and is increasingly at risk with climate change. We wrote a short piece in The Conversation making the case for why these archives matter, and why we need to preserve them in a warming world theconversation.com/earths-deep-...
Earth’s deep memory is thawing with the Arctic permafrost, degrading records of our ancient world
Permafrost holds an extraordinary molecular record of ancient life — and we are only now learning to read it, just as warming begins to erase it.
theconversation.com
⚒️ Perspective: Permafrost thaw alters iron-organic carbon interactions, impacting carbon cycling through microbial processes and hydrological changes across Arctic landscapes www.nature.com/articles/s41...
PhD Funded Position in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing at ETH Zurich, Switzerland Explore the fully funded PhD opportunity in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing at ETH Zurich. Work on cutting-edge Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) research to monitor Arctic permafrost changes using advanced…
PhD Funded Position in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Explore the fully funded PhD opportunity in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing at ETH Zurich. Work on cutting-edge Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) research to monitor Arctic permafrost changes using advanced satellite technologies.
agristok.net
Many climate models omit the permafrost carbon–climate feedback. In this new paper we show that inlcuding it can increase Earth system tipping risks, especially in overshoot scenarios with peak temperatures below 3°C or peak cumulative emissions of below 2000 PgC. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Permafrost carbon–climate feedback amplifies Earth system tipping risks
Permafrost carbon–climate feedback amplifies Earth system tipping risks, Steinert, Norman J, Munday, Gregory, Sandstad, Marit, Sanderson, Benjamin M, Wunderling, Nico
iopscience.iop.org
Our PeTCaT project website is online now 💫😀: www.petcat.earth Learn more about how we tackle several critical knowledge gaps in #permafrost carbon cycling and get to know the team behind this large 5-yr research endeavor supported by the Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institute of the Carbon Cycle.
PeTCaT: Rapid Permafrost Thaw Carbon Trajectories
petcat.earth
Thaw slumps are a rapid permafrost disturbance in regions with high ground ice contents. Thaw slump numbers and growth rates increased in Arctic Canada, but what about Siberia? We show rapid acceleration of thaw slumping in West Siberia associated with winter warming: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rapid increase in West Siberia’s retrogressive thaw slumps since 1964 associated with Arctic winter warming - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Rapid increase in West Siberia’s retrogressive thaw slumps since 1964 associated with Arctic winter warming
nature.com
Many years in the making, this new synthesis puts a more accurate number on soil organic C and N stocks stored away in Arctic river deltas large and small: Fuchs et al have collected soil data from these deltas and estimate a pool of ~57.7 billion tons of carbon. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Large stocks of permafrost soil organic carbon and nitrogen in Arctic river deltas - Nature Communications
This study estimates that Arctic deltas contain vast amounts of soil organic carbon (57.7 Pg) and soil nitrogen (3.8 Pg). This highlights the importance of these vulnerable permafrost landscapes at th...
nature.com
Thawing permafrost, erosion and rising sea levels are causing permanent changes to Arctic river deltas. This puts important carbon sinks and unique ecosystems under increasing pressure. In a study, AWI researchers are investigating the impact of these changes on the Arctic and the global climate. 🌍
Arctic river deltas at risk from mounting pressures For the first time, AWI researchers have performed a detailed calculation of the amount of carbon stored in permafrost in Arctic river deltas. In a new study in the journal Nature Communication... weiterlesen
wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖
I find this unsettling: A new study in #Lancet shows that the number of faux citations in scientific articles is on the rise, and #AI is likely to blame. @aniloza.bsky.social reports. www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/l...
Last fall, this deep sinkhole appeared at one of our field sites, with ground collapse happening in just a few weeks. This is what abrupt permafrost thaw looks like, with implications for soil stability, erosion, and methane emissions. Will be curious to see what happens here this summer.
We just published a global synthesis of mountain glacier extent during the last ice age! #LGM www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natureportfolio.nature.com Led by marvellous ECR Augusto Lima @ac-lima.bsky.social mountainsinmotion.w.uib.no @mohnfoundation.bsky.social @bjerknes.uib.no #UIB-BIO 🧵👇
Svalbard is thawing in April, and it’s not supposed to. 2026 ground temperatures at 0.2m depth in Svalbard spiking to 0°C in April, far exceeding the 1998-2025 median and maximum
Bringing #thermokarst lakes into global models is important for projecting #permafrost thaw in vast #Arctic lowlands. However, their rapid dynamics are challenging to model at scale. Reinken et al take a stochastic modeling approach and test various lake regimes: tc.copernicus.org/articles/20/...
Stochastic modelling of thermokarst lakes: size distributions and dynamic regimes
Abstract. Thermokarst lakes are among the most common and dynamic landscape features in ice-rich lowland permafrost regions. They influence carbon, water and energy fluxes between atmosphere and land ...
tc.copernicus.org
Annett Bartsch has dedicated her career to understanding what's happening with ice beneath the surface. As Science Lead of ESA CCI+ Permafrost, she uses satellite data to track ground temperature changes across Arctic lowlands and mountain regions. Join her webinar: tinyurl.com/k6mhk53z
New laboratory experiments from the University of Leeds shows that thawing permafrost can become 25 to 100 times more permeable, allowing greenhouse gases to escape into the atmosphere much more easily than when frozen. www.earth.com/news/thawing...
Study shows thawing permafrost releases much more greenhouse gas than expected
Thawing permafrost emissions could accelerate climate change as Arctic soils become 25x to 100x more permeable, releasing much more gas.
earth.com
If you're interested in the long-term development of polygonal ice-wedge terrain in Alaska after a tundra fire, then check out my newly published paper (or the TLDR version below 🙂) doi.org/10.1088/1748...
New paper alert! 📄 How do Arctic tundra landscapes develop after a wildfire? 🔥 Using high-resolution lidar DEMs and a space-for-time approach, @tabea-rettelbach.bsky.social examined how ice-wedge polygon terrain in Alaskan permafrost landscapes changes following a fire. doi.org/10.1088/1748...
Interested in getting a European postdoctoral #grant, but hesitant to apply? This #webinar is for you! Together with Sílvia Poblador and Elsa Abs, they will share the best application tips! 💻: How to get a European postdoctoral grant 🕔: Wednesday, 11 Mars 2026 @17:00 CET 🔗 : egu.eu/6WAGBT
In her new paper, Tabea uses computer vision and graph analysis on high-resolution airborne lidar DEMs of fire-affected areas in Western Alaska to investigate the post-fire development of microtopography and surface hydrology in ice-wedge polygon landscapes. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
📢 Call for Papers | Special Issue in Remote Sensing of Environment We are excited to announce a forthcoming special issue in Remote Sensing of Environment focused on the rapidly evolving area of Geospatial Foundation Models and their transformative potential for environmental remote sensing.
New year - new team! Today we would like to introduce you to the new chief editor team of our #cryoblog: please say hi to Mack and Leah! 🥳❄️ @mack-baysinger.bsky.social @leahsmuhle.bsky.social We would also like to say thanks to our outgoing chief-editor team! 💙 blogs.egu.eu/divisions/cr...
Introducing the new chief editors of the cryo blog
New year, new team! We have some changes in our editorial team and would like to introduce our new chief editors to you today – please say hi to Mack and Leah! Mack and Leah will be taking over the ro...
blogs.egu.eu
AWI researchers have reorganized the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) database and made it publicly accessible. Since the 1990s, the GTN-P has collected high-quality data to monitor global permafrost changes and its role in the climate system. www.gtn-p.org
In 2025, the AWI and University of Bremen secured extensive data sets from the USA. Now, the @dfg.de has approved around €860,000 in funding to systematically identify endangered data and secure it for the long term with the help of the PANGAEA data platform. ☁️📊 www.awi.de/en/about-us/...
Introducing the Maxar Open Data Plugin for QGIS 🚀 The Maxar Open Data Program provides free high-resolution satellite imagery to support global disaster response and recovery. To date, it has released around 150,000 images totaling ~14 TB, all freely accessible through the AWS Open Data Program.