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Title: Evaluation of air–soil temperature relationships simulated by land surfacemodels during winter across the permafrost region

Journal Article · · The Cryosphere (Online)
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  1. Beijing Normal Univ. (China)
  2. Beijing Normal Univ. (China); Alfred Wegener Inst. Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Potsdam (Germany)
  3. French National Center for Scientific Research, Grenoble (France); Univ. Grenoble Alpes (France); Univ. of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France)
  4. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
  5. Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK (United States)
  6. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  7. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
  8. National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Toulouse (France)
  9. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  10. Univ. of Victoria, BC (Canada)
  11. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama (Japan); Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK (United States)
  12. Lund Univ. (Sweden); ; Univ. of Copenhagen (Denmark)
  13. National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Toulouse (France); L'Institute for Environment and Sustainablility (IES), Ispra (Italy)
  14. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
  15. Univ. of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France)
  16. French National Center for Scientific Research, Grenoble (France)
  17. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama (Japan)
  18. French National Center for Scientific Research, Grenoble (France); Univ. Grenoble Alpes (France)
  19. Lund Univ. (Sweden)
  20. National Inst. of Polar Research, Tachikawa (Japan)
  21. World Data Centre, Obninsk (Russian Federation)
+ Show Author Affiliations

A realistic simulation of snow cover and its thermal properties are important for accurate modelling of permafrost. We analyse simulated relationships between air and near-surface (20 cm) soil temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere permafrost region during winter, with a particular focus on snow insulation effects in nine land surface models, and compare them with observations from 268 Russian stations. There are large cross-model differences in the simulated differences between near-surface soil and air temperatures (ΔT; 3 to 14 °C), in the sensitivity of soil-to-air temperature (0.13 to 0.96 °C-1), and in the relationship between Δ$$T$$ and snow depth. The observed relationship between Δ$$T$$ and snow depth can be used as a metric to evaluate the effects of each model's representation of snow insulation, hence guide improvements to the model's conceptual structure and process parameterisations. Models with better performance apply multilayer snow schemes and consider complex snow processes. Some models show poor performance in representing snow insulation due to underestimation of snow depth and/or overestimation of snow conductivity. Generally, models identified as most acceptable with respect to snow insulation simulate reasonable areas of near-surface permafrost (13.19 to 15.77 million km2). However, there is not a simple relationship between the sophistication of the snow insulation in the acceptable models and the simulated area of Northern Hemisphere near-surface permafrost, because several other factors, such as soil depth used in the models, the treatment of soil organic matter content, hydrology and vegetation cover, also affect the simulated permafrost distribution.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1471019
Journal Information:
The Cryosphere (Online), Vol. 10, Issue 4; ISSN 1994-0424
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 34 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (10)

Uncertainties in coupled regional Arctic climate simulations associated with the used land surface model: Atmosphere and Permafrost in HIRHAM5-CLM4 journal August 2017
Changes in the Response of the Northern Hemisphere Carbon Uptake to Temperature Over the Last Three Decades journal May 2018
Dependence of the evolution of carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region on the trajectory of climate change journal March 2018
Impacts of snow on soil temperature observed across the circumpolar north journal April 2018
An ecological barrier between the Himalayas and the Hengduan Mountains maintains the disjunct distribution of Roscoea journal October 2019
ORCHIDEE-MICT (v8.4.1), a land surface model for the high latitudes: model description and validation journal January 2018
Effects of short-term variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in permafrost regions journal January 2018
Permafrost variability over the Northern Hemisphere based on the MERRA-2 reanalysis journal January 2019
Soil moisture and hydrology projections of the permafrost region – a model intercomparison journal January 2020
Effects of short-term variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in permafrost regions text January 2018

Figures / Tables (9)

Figure 1(p. 1725)figure Figure 1
Figure 2(p. 1726)figure Figure 2
Figure 3(p. 1727)figure Figure 3
Table 2(p. 1728)table Table 2
Figure 4(p. 1729)figure Figure 4
Figure 5(p. 1729)figure Figure 5
Figure 6(p. 1731)figure Figure 6
Table 3(p. 1732)table Table 3
Table 4(p. 1733)table Table 4

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