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Approximately 1700 Pg of soil carbon (C) are stored in the northern circumpolar permafrost zone, more than twice as much C than in the atmosphere. The overall amount, rate, and form of C released to the atmosphere in a warmer world will influence the strength Climatic Change (2013) 119:359-374 DOI 10.1007 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10584-013-0730-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. of the permafrost C feedback to climate change. We used a survey to quantify variability in the perception of the vulnerability of permafrost C to climate change. Experts were asked to provide quantitative estimates of permafrost change in response to four scenarios of warming. For the highest warming scenario (RCP 8.5), experts hypothesized that C release from permafrost zone soils could be 19-45 Pg C by 2040, 162-288 Pg C by 2100, and 381-616 Pg C by 2300 in CO 2 equivalent using 100-year CH 4 global warming potential (GWP). These values become 50 % larger using 20-year CH 4 GWP, with a third to a half of expected climate forcing coming from CH 4 even though CH 4 was only 2.3 % of the expected C release. Experts projected that twothirds of this release could be avoided under the lowest warming scenario (RCP 2.6). These results highlight the potential risk from permafrost thaw and serve to frame a hypothesis about the magnitude of this feedback to climate change. However, the level of emissions proposed here are unlikely to overshadow the impact of fossil fuel burning, which will continue to be the main source of C emissions and climate forcing.

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[1] We document and characterize hanging valleys in a fluvially eroded landscape in eastern Taiwan. Our conceptual model for the initiation of hanging valleys builds on a recently proposed model of bedrock incision in which erosion actually becomes less efficient on very steep channel gradients. If a pulse of incision in the main stem outpaces the tributary response, the gradients at tributary mouths may therefore pass a threshold value beyond which erosional efficiency declines, giving rise to a mismatch between trunk and tributary erosion rates. This mismatch is expected at junctions with small tributaries, where a step function decrease in drainage area also leads to sharp contrasts in water and sediment flux between trunk and tributary channels. The occurrence of hanging valleys in actively uplifting fluvial landscapes such as the Central Range of Taiwan suggests that the most common parameterizations of bedrock erosion, which typically assume a monotonic positive correlation between channel gradient and incision rate, may be violated in very steep channels. In addition, hanging valleys could greatly increase the response time of landscapes to tectonic perturbations since catchments above these tributary mouths will be insulated from these perturbations until a new suite of processes (e.g., weathering and rock mass failure) wear through the hanging valley lip. The results of this study underscore the need for a more complete understanding of bedrock erosion processes and the incorporation of process transitions and threshold conditions into landscape evolution models.