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Ongoing permafrost thaw in the Arctic may remobilize large amounts of old organic matter. Upon transport to the Siberian shelf seas, this material may be degraded and released to the atmosphere, exported off-shelf, or buried in the sediments. While our understanding of the fate of permafrost-derived organic matter in shelf waters is improving, poor constraints remain regarding degradation in sediments. Here we use an extensive data set of organic carbon concentrations and isotopes (n=109) to inventory terrigenous organic carbon (terrOC) in surficial sediments of the Laptev and East Siberian Seas (LS + ESS). Of these similar to 2.7 Tg terrOC about 55% appear resistant to degradation on a millennial timescale. A first-order degradation rate constant of 1.5 kyr(-1) is derived by combining a previously established relationship between water depth and cross-shelf sediment-terrOC transport time with mineral-associated terrOC loadings. This yields a terrOC degradation flux of similar to 1.7Gg/year from surficial sediments during cross-shelf transport, which is orders of magnitude lower than earlier estimates for degradation fluxes of dissolved and particulate terrOC in the water column of the LS + ESS. The difference is mainly due to the low degradation rate constant of sedimentary terrOC, likely caused by a combination of factors: (i) the lower availability of oxygen in the sediments compared to fully oxygenated waters, (ii) the stabilizing role of terrOC-mineral associations, and (iii) the higher proportion of material that is intrinsically recalcitrant due to its chemical/molecular structure in sediments. Sequestration of permafrost-released terrOC in shelf sediments may thereby attenuate the otherwise expected permafrost carbon-climate feedback.

Plain language summary Frozen soils in the Arctic contain large amounts of old organic matter. With ongoing climate change this previously freeze-locked carbon storage becomes vulnerable to transport and decay. Upon delivery to the shallow nearshore seas, it may either be directly degraded to carbon dioxide or methane and thereby fuel further warming or get buried and stored in sediments on the sea floor. Our understanding of the fate of carbon released from permafrost soils is increasing, yet uncertainties remain regarding its degradation in the sediment. Here we constrain how much land-derived organic carbon is deposited in the top layer of the sediment (the part that is prone to transport and exposed to oxygen-stimulated degradation) in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas. We find that more than half of this stock likely resists degradation, while the rest decays relatively slowly. Therefore, the amount of carbon released annually from degradation in surface sediments is much smaller than what was found to be emitted from overlying waters in earlier studies. We suspect that this difference is caused by a combination of mechanisms hindering degradation in sediments and thus conclude that the burial of land-derived carbon may help to dampen the climate impact of thawing permafrost.