Snow melt stimulates ecosystem respiration in Arctic ecosystems

Cold seasons in Arctic ecosystems are increasingly important to the annual carbon balance of these vulnerable ecosystems. Arctic winters are largely harsh and inaccessible leading historic data gaps during that time. Until recently, cold seasons have been assumed to have negligible impacts on the annual carbon balance but as data coverage increases and the Arctic warms, the cold season has been shown to account for over half of annual methane (CH4) emissions and can offset summer photosynthetic carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake. Freeze–thaw cycle dynamics play a critical role in controlling cold season CO2 and CH4 loss, but the relationship has not been extensively studied. Here, we analyze freeze–thaw processes through in situ CO2 and CH4 fluxes in conjunction with soil cores for physical structure and porewater samples for redox biogeochemistry. We find a movement of water toward freezing fronts in soil cores, leaving air spaces in soils, which allows for rapid infiltration of oxygen‐rich snow melt in spring as shown by oxidized iron in porewater. The snow melt period coincides with rising ecosystem respiration and can offset up to 41% of the summer CO2 uptake. Our study highlights this important seasonal process and shows spring greenhouse gas emissions are largely due to production from respiration instead of only bursts of stored gases. Further warming is projected to result in increases of snowpack and deeper thaws, which could increase this ecosystem respiration dominate snow melt period causing larger greenhouse gas losses during spring. Our work investigates the freeze–thaw cycle in Arctic ecosystems and the relationship to greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane to snow melt. The freezing process causes air spaces to form in soils, which then allows the infiltration of snow melt upon thawing, causing rapid warming and a sudden introduction of oxygen. This in turn creates conditions that may be stimulating ecosystem respiration, sometimes offsetting close to half of summer CO2 uptake.