Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment
Global climate change has resulted in a warmer Arctic, with projections indicating accelerated modifications to permafrost in the near future. The thermal, hydrological, and mechanical physics of permafrost thaw have been hypothesized to couple in a complex fashion but data collection efforts to stu...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6053422 2023-05-15T15:06:08+02:00 Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment Wagner, Anna M. Lindsey, Nathaniel J. Dou, Shan Gelvin, Arthur Saari, Stephanie Williams, Christopher Ekblaw, Ian Ulrich, Craig Borglin, Sharon Morales, Alejandro Ajo-Franklin, Jonathan 2018-07-19 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6053422/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30026500 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6053422/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30026500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y 2018-07-29T00:26:47Z Global climate change has resulted in a warmer Arctic, with projections indicating accelerated modifications to permafrost in the near future. The thermal, hydrological, and mechanical physics of permafrost thaw have been hypothesized to couple in a complex fashion but data collection efforts to study these feedbacks in the field have been limited. As a result, laboratory and numerical models have largely outpaced field calibration datasets. We present the design, execution, and initial results from the first decameter-scale controlled thawing experiment, targeting coupled thermal/mechanical response, particularly the temporal sequence of surface subsidence relative to permafrost degradation at depth. The warming test was conducted in Fairbanks, AK, and utilized an array of in-ground heaters to induce thaw of a ~11 × 13 × 1.5 m soil volume over 63 days. The 4-D temperature evolution demonstrated that the depth to permafrost lowered 1 m during the experiment. The resulting thaw-induced surface deformation was ~10 cm as observed using a combination of measurement techniques. Surface deformation occurred over a smaller spatial domain than the full thawed volume, suggesting that gradients in cryotexture and ice content were significant. Our experiment provides the first large field calibration dataset for multiphysics thaw models. Text Arctic Climate change Ice permafrost PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Fairbanks Scientific Reports 8 1 |
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Article Wagner, Anna M. Lindsey, Nathaniel J. Dou, Shan Gelvin, Arthur Saari, Stephanie Williams, Christopher Ekblaw, Ian Ulrich, Craig Borglin, Sharon Morales, Alejandro Ajo-Franklin, Jonathan Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment |
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Global climate change has resulted in a warmer Arctic, with projections indicating accelerated modifications to permafrost in the near future. The thermal, hydrological, and mechanical physics of permafrost thaw have been hypothesized to couple in a complex fashion but data collection efforts to study these feedbacks in the field have been limited. As a result, laboratory and numerical models have largely outpaced field calibration datasets. We present the design, execution, and initial results from the first decameter-scale controlled thawing experiment, targeting coupled thermal/mechanical response, particularly the temporal sequence of surface subsidence relative to permafrost degradation at depth. The warming test was conducted in Fairbanks, AK, and utilized an array of in-ground heaters to induce thaw of a ~11 × 13 × 1.5 m soil volume over 63 days. The 4-D temperature evolution demonstrated that the depth to permafrost lowered 1 m during the experiment. The resulting thaw-induced surface deformation was ~10 cm as observed using a combination of measurement techniques. Surface deformation occurred over a smaller spatial domain than the full thawed volume, suggesting that gradients in cryotexture and ice content were significant. Our experiment provides the first large field calibration dataset for multiphysics thaw models. |
format |
Text |
author |
Wagner, Anna M. Lindsey, Nathaniel J. Dou, Shan Gelvin, Arthur Saari, Stephanie Williams, Christopher Ekblaw, Ian Ulrich, Craig Borglin, Sharon Morales, Alejandro Ajo-Franklin, Jonathan |
author_facet |
Wagner, Anna M. Lindsey, Nathaniel J. Dou, Shan Gelvin, Arthur Saari, Stephanie Williams, Christopher Ekblaw, Ian Ulrich, Craig Borglin, Sharon Morales, Alejandro Ajo-Franklin, Jonathan |
author_sort |
Wagner, Anna M. |
title |
Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment |
title_short |
Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment |
title_full |
Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment |
title_fullStr |
Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment |
title_full_unstemmed |
Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence Observations during a Controlled Warming Experiment |
title_sort |
permafrost degradation and subsidence observations during a controlled warming experiment |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6053422/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30026500 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y |
geographic |
Arctic Fairbanks |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Fairbanks |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Ice permafrost |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Ice permafrost |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6053422/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30026500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29292-y |
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Scientific Reports |
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