Feedbacks Between Surface Deformation and Permafrost Degradation in Ice Wedge Polygons: Modeling Archive

• Main Authors: Abolt, Charles, Young, Michael, Atchley, Adam, Harp, Dylan, Coon, Ethan
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: 54 Environmental Sciences; Arctic; Active layer thickness; Ice; permafrost; Prudhoe Bay; Thermokarst; wedge*; Alaska
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1561091; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1561091; https://doi.org/10.5440/1561091

This Modeling Archive is in support of an NGEE Arctic publication ?Feedbacks between surface deformation and permafrost degradation in ice wedge polygons,? submitted for review to the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. The goals of the study were: 1) to determine how variability in microtopographic conditions (i.e., rim height, trough width, and trough depth) and hydrologic conditions in the trough (i.e., inundated or well-drained) of an ice wedge polygon impact active layer thickness above an ice wedge; and 2) to determine how microtopographic and hydrologic controls on active layer thickness may influence thermokarst trajectories in ice wedge polygon terrain. Toward these objectives, an ensemble of fine-scale simulations of the hydrologic and thermal regimes in ice wedge polygons of variable microtopography was conducted, each polygon being subjected to identical meteorological forcing data, characteristic of the last twenty years near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Simulations incorporated solutions of conservation of water and mass at the surface, in the subsurface, and in the snowpack. Active layer thickness in the trough (i.e., above the ice wedge) was extracted from each simulation at the end of a 19 year spin-up, and at the end of a markedly warm summer which followed the spin-up. This archive includes mesh files, meteorological forcing data, and input files needed to reproduce the analysis described in the paper. Due to the large file sizes, raw model output has been omitted. However, post-processing scripts and time series of several variables extracted from the raw output have been included. All simulations were conducted using Amanzi-ATS, v 0.86 (https://doi.org/10.11578/dc.20190911.1).