Thermal state of permafrost in Russia

Abstract

The results of the International Permafrost Association's International Polar Year Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) project are presented based on field measurements from Russia during the IPY years (2007-09) and collected historical data. Most ground temperatures measured in existing and new boreholes show a substantial warming during the last 20 to 30 years. The magnitude of the warming varied with location, but was typically from 0.58C to 28C at the depth of zero annual amplitude. Thawing of Little Ice Age permafrost is ongoing at many locations. There are some indications that the late Holocene permafrost has begun to thaw at some undisturbed locations in northeastern Europe and northwest Siberia. Thawing of permafrost is most noticeable within the discontinuous permafrost domain. However, permafrost in Russia is also starting to thaw at some limited locations in the continuous permafrost zone. As a result, a northward displacement of the boundary between continuous and discontinuous permafrost zones was observed. This data set will serve as a baseline against which to measure changes of near-surface permafrost temperatures and permafrost boundaries, to validate climate model scenarios, and for temperature reanalysis.

Modeling the temperature evolution of Svalbard permafrost during the 20th and 21st century

“…This is in accordance with observed warming trends recently published e.g. by Romanovsky et al (2010a) and Smith et al (2010) from Russia and North America, respectively.…”

“…Hilbich et al, 2008Gruber et al, 2004). In general, the active layer change during recent years, and especially during the last decades is similar to observations in other parts of the world (Romanovsky et al, 2010a;Smith et al, 2010;Zhao et al, 2010;Christiansen et al, 2010).…”

Temporal and spatial variations of the active layer along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway in a permafrost region

“…The same result was observed in the Urengoy region in Russia [31], where the warming rate in cold permafrost regions reached 0.045°C a -1 , but only 0.030°C a -1 in warm permafrost regions. A possible reason for this may be that the heat consumption for phase transformation in the cold permafrost region is smaller.…”

Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union Volume 92, Number 9, 1 March 2011

“…Climate warming since the LIA caused permafrost extent to approach pre-LIA levels again. Spatially explicit modeling indicates that permafrost could shrink below the minimum extent reached during the HTM by 2100, as permafrost with temperatures currently between 0°C and -2.5°C will be actively thawing, affecting almost half (9.0 × 10 6 square kilometers) of the current permafrost extent in the Northern Hemisphere [Romanovsky et al, 2008].…”