Permafrost temperature baseline at 15 meters depth in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (2010–2019)

• Main Authors: Zou, Defu, Zhao, Lin, Hu, Guojie, Du, Erji, Liu, Guangyue, Wang, Chong, Li, Wangping
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: permafrost
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-114; https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-114/

The ground temperature at a fixed depth is a crucial boundary condition for understanding the properties of deep permafrost. However, the commonly used mean annual ground temperature at the depth of the zero annual amplitude (MAGT dzaa ) has application limitations due to large spatial heterogeneity in observed depths. In this study, we utilized 231 borehole records of mean annual ground temperature at a depth of 15 meters (MAGT 15m ) from 2010 to 2019 and employed support vector regression (SVR) to predict gridded MAGT 15m data at a spatial resolution of nearly 1 km across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). SVR predictions demonstrated a R 2 value of 0.48 with a negligible negative overestimation (-0.01 °C). The average MAGT 15m of the QTP permafrost was -1.85 °C (±1.58 °C), with 90% of values ranging from -5.1 °C to -0.1 °C and 51.2% exceeding -1.5 °C. The freezing degree days (FDD) was the most significant predictor (p<0.001) of MAGT 15m , followed by thawing degree days (TDD), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and soil bulk density (BD) (p<0.01). Overall, the MAGT 15m increased from northwest to southeast and decreased with elevation. Lower MAGT 15m values are prevail in high mountainous areas with steep slopes. The MAGT 15m was the lowest in the basins of the Amu Darya, Indus, and Tarim rivers (-2.7 to -2.9 °C) and the highest in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (-0.8 to -0.9 °C). The baseline dataset of MAGT 15m during 2010–2019 for the QTP permafrost will facilitates simulations of deep permafrost characteristics and provides fundamental data for permafrost model validation and improvement.