PermaCOST: New International Research Network for Coordinated and Standardised Monitoring of Permafrost Response to Climate Change

PermaCOST is a new international research network funded by the COST Action Association of the European Union (CA24157). This four-years project (2025-2029) brings together European permafrost researchers, stakeholders, and practitioners with expertise in different measurement techniques and permafrost conditions to work towards a coordinated and standardised monitoring of permafrost response to climate change.

Permafrost has been dramatically warming and degrading in most mountain and polar regions, with far-reaching and long-term implications for natural and anthropogenic environments. In this context of rapid changes and large socio-economic impacts, the increased scrutiny from the society and the growing demand for sound data from stakeholders make permafrost monitoring a timely and highly relevant field of research.

Documenting, analysing, and assessing the response of permafrost to climate change requires fundamental cross-disciplinary and cross-geographic knowledge that can only be achieved through coordinated and standardized monitoring activities. For years, European research groups have been at the forefront of operational and innovative permafrost monitoring activities, but they have not been able to further coordinate their activities or to establish widely accepted standards for data acquisition and processing.

Through an unprecedented network of experts and early career investigators, PermaCOST aims to promote and foster operational networking of permafrost researchers, stakeholders and practitioners to facilitate an overall comparability of data sets and time series of various permafrost variables for a better characterisation of the long-term permafrost evolution on the global scale.

PermaCOST is organised in five Working Groups (WGs) with the specific objectives to identify key novel permafrost monitoring methods (WG1), to homogenise permafrost data acquisition standards (WG2) and permafrost data processing standards (WG3), to assess the state and evolution of permafrost in Europe (WG4) and to promote the development of operational permafrost monitoring networks at national, regional, and European scales (WG5).

In this contribution, we will present the objectives and structure of the project, as well as the concrete tasks and ongoing activities in the WGs covering mountain, polar and marginal permafrost. We will also inform the permafrost community on how to join the network, and take advantage of the upcoming opportunities for networking, training, and research collaboration, through short-term scientific missions, travel grants, training schools and workshops.