With climate change, Arctic hillslopes above ice-rich permafrost are vulnerable to enhanced carbon mobilization. In this work elevation change estimates generated from satellite observations reveal a substantial acceleration of carbon mobilization on the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia between 2010 and 2021. The strong increase occurring in 2020 coincided with a severe Siberian heatwave and highlights that carbon mobilization can respond sharply and non-linearly to increasing temperatures.

This Open Access publication in the journal The Cryosphere is the first to characterize the coherent backscatter opposition effect for the Earth's snow cover with bistatic radar experiments from ground and from space.