Modelling the seasonal variations of soil temperatures in the Arctic coasts

Abstract

The soil temperature within the Arctic coasts within the continuous permafrost is not widely measured; the temporal and spatial resolutions of the measured temperature observations are relatively high. In this study, we examined the methods to interpolate, hindcast and forecast temperature measurements within the active layer and shallow permafrost when the temperature measurements at the surface or near the surface are available. The temperature variations along the year are periodic, and hence attempts are made to express the seasonal variations with a combination of periodic function (Fourier components); which are used as boundary conditions to reach the analytical solutions. The temperature measurements from surface to about 10 metre of depths at the Baydaratskaya Bay, Kara Sea are available. We adopted a data-driven model based on simplified analytical closed-form solution derived from the boundary conditions. The parameters of the solution are calibrated from the field measurements and validated with field observations. The model then can be used to hindcast and forecast temperature at any points within the soil.