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Paul Miller

Senior lecturer

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Evaluation of air-soil temperature relationships simulated by land surface models during winter across the permafrost region

Author

  • Wenli Wang
  • Annette Rinke
  • John C. Moore
  • Duoying Ji
  • Xuefeng Cui
  • Shushi Peng
  • David M. Lawrence
  • A. David McGuire
  • Eleanor J. Burke
  • Xiaodong Chen
  • Bertrand Decharme
  • Charles Koven
  • Andrew MacDougall
  • Kazuyuki Saito
  • Wenxin Zhang
  • Ramdane Alkama
  • Theodore J. Bohn
  • Philippe Ciais
  • Christine Delire
  • Isabelle Gouttevin
  • Tomohiro Hajima
  • Gerhard Krinner
  • Dennis P. Lettenmaier
  • Paul A. Miller
  • Benjamin Smith
  • Tetsuo Sueyoshi
  • Artem B. Sherstiukov
Show all

Summary, in English

A realistic simulation of snow cover and its thermal properties are important for accurate modelling of permafrost. We analyse simulated relationships between air and near-surface (20 cm) soil temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere permafrost region during winter, with a particular focus on snow insulation effects in nine land surface models, and compare them with observations from 268 Russian stations. There are large cross-model differences in the simulated differences between near-surface soil and air temperatures (ΔT; 3 to 14 °C), in the sensitivity of soil-to-air temperature (0.13 to 0.96 °C °C-1), and in the relationship between ΔT and snow depth. The observed relationship between ΔT and snow depth can be used as a metric to evaluate the effects of each model's representation of snow insulation, hence guide improvements to the model's conceptual structure and process parameterisations. Models with better performance apply multilayer snow schemes and consider complex snow processes. Some models show poor performance in representing snow insulation due to underestimation of snow depth and/or overestimation of snow conductivity. Generally, models identified as most acceptable with respect to snow insulation simulate reasonable areas of near-surface permafrost (13.19 to 15.77 million km2). However, there is not a simple relationship between the sophistication of the snow insulation in the acceptable models and the simulated area of Northern Hemisphere near-surface permafrost, because several other factors, such as soil depth used in the models, the treatment of soil organic matter content, hydrology and vegetation cover, also affect the simulated permafrost distribution.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2016

Language

English

Pages

1721-1737

Publication/Series

Cryosphere

Volume

10

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Copernicus GmbH

Topic

  • Physical Geography

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1994-0416