A 20-year record (1998-2017) of permafrost, active layer and meteorological conditions at a high Arctic permafrost research site (Bayelva, Spitsbergen)

• Published in: Earth System Science Data
• Main Authors: Boike, J., Juszak, I., Lange, S., Chadburn, S., Burke, E., Paul Overduin, P., Roth, K., Ippisch, O., Bornemann, N., Stern, Lennart, Gouttevin, I., Hauber, E., Westermann, S.
• Other Authors: ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE HELMHOLTZ CENTER FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH POTSDAM DEU, Partenaires IRSTEA, Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA)-Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA), HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT BERLIN DEU, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS SCHOOL OF EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT LEEDS GBR, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES GBR, MET OFFICE HADLEY CENTRE EXETER GBR, UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSICS HEIDELBERG DEU, TU CLAUSTHAL INSTITUTE FOR MATHEMATICS DEU, RiverLy (UR Riverly), Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA), Erosion torrentielle neige et avalanches (UR ETGR (ETNA)), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Department of Geosciences Oslo, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences Oslo, University of Oslo (UiO)-University of Oslo (UiO)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2018
• Subjects: [SDE]Environmental Sciences; Arctic; Bayelva; Ny-Ålesund; Svalbard; Global warming; Ny Ålesund; permafrost; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02608576; https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02608576/document; https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02608576/file/pub00060040.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-355-2018

International audience Most permafrost is located in the Arctic, where frozen organic carbon makes it an important component of the global climate system. Despite the fact that the Arctic climate changes more rapidly than the rest of the globe, observational data density in the region is low. Permafrost thaw and carbon release to the atmosphere are a positive feedback mechanism that can exacerbate global warming. This positive feedback functions via changing land-atmosphere energy and mass exchanges. There is thus a great need to understand links between the energy balance, which can vary rapidly over hourly to annual timescales, and permafrost, which changes slowly over long time periods. This understanding thus mandates long-term observational data sets. Such a data set is available from the Bayelva site at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, where meteorology, energy balance components and subsurface observations have been made for the last 20 years. Additional data include a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) that can be used together with the snow physical information for snowpack modeling and a panchromatic image. This paper presents the data set produced so far, explains instrumentation, calibration, processing and data quality control, as well as the sources for various resulting data sets. The resulting data set is unique in the Arctic and serves as a baseline for future studies. The mean permafrost temperature is -2:8 °, with a zero-amplitude depth at 5.5m (2009-2017). Since the data provide observations of temporally variable parameters that mitigate energy fluxes between permafrost and atmosphere, such as snow depth and soil moisture content, they are suitable for use in integrating, calibrating and testing permafrost as a component in earth system models. The presented data are available in the Supplement for this paper (time series) and through the PANGAEA and Zenodo data portals: time series (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.880120, https://zenodo.org/record/ 1139714) and HRSC-AX data products ...