Recent and pre-instrumental climatic conditions as reconstructed from temperature logs in wells in western and northern Canada
- Northern Geothermal, Edmonton, Alberta (Canada)
- Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario (Canada)
This study reports a subregional analysis of ground surface temperature (GST) and surface air temperature (SAT) in Canada. Temperature logs made to depths of up to 300 m in 80 wells in the Canadian Prairie Provinces were compared with SAT in this area. A statistically significant spatial correlation was found between identical grid samples extracted from the 1950-1990 warming maps for SAT and GST warming. The results of modelling of precise temperature logs show evidence of annual warming of GST over the past half century of 2.1 C with a standard deviation of 0.9C. Annual SAT warming in this region for the same period, as derived from historical climatological records, has been 1.5C with a standard deviation of 0.4C. The difference between GST and SAT warming has been close to 40% in the boreal forest ecozone of northern Alberta and less than 10% in the prairie grassland ecozone of southern Alberta. It is hypothesized that a large portion of GST warming is a result of accelerating natural and anthropogenic land clearing through deforestation and farming. If the rate of climatic warming and anthropogenic change to the land surface continues, the southern boundary of the discontinuous permafrost will move northward at a faster rate than predicted from instrumental SAT warming data alone. 21 refs., 7 figs.
- OSTI ID:
- 535513
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970207-; TRN: 97:005076-0045
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 77. annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Long Beach, CA (United States), 2-7 Feb 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of Eighth symposium on global change studies; PB: 402 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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