Effects of short-term variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in permafrost regions

Effects of the short-term temporal variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in northern high-latitude regions have been investigated. For this, a process-oriented land surface model has been driven using an artificially manipulated climate dataset. Short-term climate variability m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Cryosphere
Main Authors: C. Beer, P. Porada, A. Ekici, M. Brakebusch
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2018
Subjects:
geo
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-741-2018
https://www.the-cryosphere.net/12/741/2018/tc-12-741-2018.pdf
https://doaj.org/article/2d783d13bd214e648d64ccf7ab18b9c9
Description
Summary:Effects of the short-term temporal variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in northern high-latitude regions have been investigated. For this, a process-oriented land surface model has been driven using an artificially manipulated climate dataset. Short-term climate variability mainly impacts snow depth, and the thermal diffusivity of lichens and bryophytes. These impacts of climate variability on insulating surface layers together substantially alter the heat exchange between atmosphere and soil. As a result, soil temperature is 0.1 to 0.8 °C higher when climate variability is reduced. Earth system models project warming of the Arctic region but also increasing variability of meteorological variables and more often extreme meteorological events. Therefore, our results show that projected future increases in permafrost temperature and active-layer thickness in response to climate change will be lower (i) when taking into account future changes in short-term variability of meteorological variables and (ii) when representing dynamic snow and lichen and bryophyte functions in land surface models.