Objective
The overall goal of this project is to develop tools and provide information for evaluation and understanding effects of the active layer of the cryosphere on climate and for studying potential effects of the global climate change on the permafrost degradation.
The following 3 tasks are suggested in this proposal:
(i) development of the one-dimensional comprehensive model of the "air - vegetation - snow - soil" system;
(ii) verification of the one-dimensional model of the "air - vegetation - snow - soil" system and analysis of the variability of the seasonal thawing layer in the permafrost regions;
(iii) study of impact of the atmosphere-land surface interactions in the permafrost regions on climate variability on the seasonal and interannual time-scales and estimation of the permafrost degradation "from above".
To realize this project, it will be taken into account that the surface can be covered by vegetation and snow, which modify significantly the momentum and energy exchange between the soil and atmosphere. In the soil, it is nesessary to describe both the processes of heat and moisture diffusion, and the processes of condensation/evaporation and freezing/melting of the soil water. This is especially important for an estimation of the possibility of the permafrost degradation "from above" due to climate variations.
The research efforts of the project will include:
(i) development of the one-dimensional comprehensive model of the "air - vegetation - snow - soil" system;
(ii) verification of such a model on the basis of experimental data;
(iii) investigation of the role of climate parameters in evolution of the seasonal thawing layer;
(iv) analysis of variability of the seasonal thawing layer in different permafrost regions with the aim to estimate the possibility of degradation of permafrost "from above";
(v) incorporation of the model in question into the GCM in the form of the new land-surface parameterization and numerical experimentation with the aim to study the climate sensitivity to the air - land surface interactions in the permafrost regions.
At the end of the project, the following basic research results should be obtained:
(i) numerical model of the "air - vegetation - snow - soil" system will be developed and verified for different geographical regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including the permafrost areas, and for different seasons, using own unique data and available data from the national and international field experiments, and from the Global Geocryological Database;
(ii) on the basis of numerical experiments and analysis of the field data, an improved understanding of the role of climate variations in evolution of the seasonal thawing layer in the permafrost regions will be achieved;
(iii) new parameterization of the land-surface processes will be developed and incorporated into the GCM's (A5421,EC SIB and CLIMBER), developed/applied at the institutions of the project participants;
(iv) on the basis of sensitivity experiments with GCM's the possibility of degradation of permafrost "from above" due to climate variations will be studied and its impact on climate change will be estimated.
Dissemination of the results of this investigation will be done in the form of refereed scientific papers and conference talks.
Topic(s)
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22100 Lund
Sweden