Surface energy balance of sub‐Arctic roads with varying snow regimes and properties in permafrost regions

Abstract

Surface energy balance (SEB) strongly influences the thermal state of permafrost, cryohydrological processes, and infrastructure stability. Road construction and snow accumulation affect the energy balance of underlying permafrost. Herein, we use an experimental road section of the Alaska Highway to develop a SEB model to quantify the surface energy components and ground surface temperature (GST) for different land cover types with varying snow regimes and properties. Simulated and measured ground temperatures are in good agreement, and our results show that the quantity of heat entering the embankment center and slope is mainly controlled by net radiation, and less by the sensible heat flux. In spring, lateral heat flux from the embankment center leads to earlier disappearance of snowpack on the embankment slope. In winter, the insulation created by the snow cover on the embankment slope reduces heat loss by a factor of three compared with the embankment center where the snow is plowed. The surface temperature offsets are 5.0°C and 7.8°C for the embankment center and slope, respectively. Furthermore, the heat flux released on the embankment slope exponentially decreases with increasing snow depth, and linearly decreases with earlier snow cover in fall and shorter snow‐covered period in spring.

Ground Surface Freezing and Thawing Index Distribution in the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor and Factors Analysis Based on GeoDetector Technique

“…In the SAYYR of QTP, the N t under dense vegetation is lower than 1, while it is higher than 1 at sites with sparse vegetation, and the N f values are less than 1 at all sites [22]. In unnatural ground conditions, different constructions materials and different combinations can also lead to changes in surface heat fluxes [63,64]. This can complicate the local N-factors.…”

Circum-Arctic Map of the Yedoma Permafrost Domain

“…Scientific interest in Yedoma is rising as, besides the vulnerability of its frozen organic matter pool to degradation, melt of the high excess ground ice upon Yedoma thaw will cause substantial ground volume loss. Resulting surface subsidence will pose a serious threat to any infrastructure built on permafrost (de Grandpré et al, 2012;Hjort et al, 2018;Streletskiy et al, 2019;Chen et al, 2021;Schneider von Deimling et al, 2021). More broadly, Yedoma thaw implies substantial consequences for landscape reorganization by surface subsidence (Günther et al, 2015;Antonova et al, 2018), thermal erosion (Kanevskiy et al, 2016;Fuchs et al, 2020;Shur et al, 2021b;Morgenstern et al, 2021), thermokarst formation (Jones et al, 2011;Nitze et al, 2017;Ulrich et al, 2017;Veremeeva et al, 2021), and relief inversion as well as land loss by coastal erosion (Günther et al, 2013;Farquharson et al, 2018).…”

Increased nutrient availability speeds up permafrost development, while goose grazing slows it down in a Canadian High Arctic wetland

“…Preliminary results showed that thaw depth was unsensitive to variation in snow depth or depth hoar formation during the 5 year of the modelling experiment, max snow depth ranging from 0.10 to 0.36 m. We thus used the observed snow depth with similar snow properties for all scenario and treatments. Complete model specification is available in Appendix C and Chen et al (2021).…”