Image by Mattias Björkstedt from Pixabay Peer-reviewedWhat does this mean? Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts. Permafrost thawing due to climate change could lead to an increase in wildfires in Arctic and sub-arctic regions, according to international researchers, who say an increase in wildfires over permafrost regions may lead to changes in net terrestrial carbon uptake. Permafrost is ground that remains permanently frozen, and it has been shown to be thawing due to global warming temperature increases, leading to changes in soil moisture levels that might alter the likelihood of wildfires. The team used a climate model which simulates the Earth’s climate system to analyse 50 climate situations under both historical and projected future emissions scenarios for the period 1850 to 2100. The researchers say their model projects a notable increase in permafrost thawing and a rapid decrease in soil moisture in regions such as Siberia and Canada between the mid to late 21st century compared to the historical period. This abrupt decline in soil moisture is associated with an increase in surface air temperature and a decrease in relative humidity, further exacerbating the effects of rising temperatures, which could be associated with a projected intensification of wildfires in high-latitude regions. Journal/conference: Nature Communications Research: Paper Organisation/s: Institute for Basic Science, South Korea Funder: I.-W.K., A. T., J.-E.K., K.B.R., and S.-S.L. were supported by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) IBS-R028-D1. K.B.R. was supported by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. H. L. was supported by the Research Council of Norway project 328922. W.R.W. was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) award number 2031238. The simulations were conducted on the IBS/ICCP supercomputer “Aleph,” 1.43 Petaflops high-performance Cray XC50-LC Skylake computing […]