Abstract
Abstract. The Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) provides the first dynamic database associated with the Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) and the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) programs, which extensively collect permafrost temperature and active layer thickness (ALT) data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions. The purpose of GTN-P is to establish an early warning system for the consequences of climate change in permafrost regions and to provide standardized thermal permafrost data to global models. In this paper we introduce the GTN-P database and perform statistical analysis of the GTN-P metadata to identify and quantify the spatial gaps in the site distribution in relation to climate-effective environmental parameters. We describe the concept and structure of the data management system in regard to user operability, data transfer and data policy. We outline data sources and data processing including quality control strategies based on national correspondents. Assessment of the metadata and data quality reveals 63 % metadata completeness at active layer sites and 50 % metadata completeness for boreholes. Voronoi tessellation analysis on the spatial sample distribution of boreholes and active layer measurement sites quantifies the distribution inhomogeneity and provides a potential method to locate additional permafrost research sites by improving the representativeness of thermal monitoring across areas underlain by permafrost. The depth distribution of the boreholes reveals that 73 % are shallower than 25 m and 27 % are deeper, reaching a maximum of 1 km depth. Comparison of the GTN-P site distribution with permafrost zones, soil organic carbon contents and vegetation types exhibits different local to regional monitoring situations, which are illustrated with maps. Preferential slope orientation at the sites most likely causes a bias in the temperature monitoring and should be taken into account when using the data for global models. The distribution of GTN-P sites within zones of projected temperature change show a high representation of areas with smaller expected temperature rise but a lower number of sites within Arctic areas where climate models project extreme temperature increase. GTN-P metadata used in this paper are available at doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.842821.
Highlights
Warming of the cryosphere is likely to exceed the global average temperature increase (ACIA, 2004; Groisman and Soja, 2009; IPCC, 2013; Miller et al, 2010)
The resulting NetCDF files represent (i) a Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) data set in a multidimensional array representation of annual time series profiles of ground temperature, orthogonal along vertical and orthogonal along time, and (ii) a Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) data set in an orthogonal multidimensional array representation of annual times series of active layer thickness
The distribution of active layer thickness (ALT) and TSP point coordinates was calculated within the different carbon content groups and shows that, at the circumpolar scale, 25.2 % of all boreholes and almost 29 % of all ALT sites are located in permafrost areas that contain more than 25 % organic carbon
Summary
Warming of the cryosphere is likely to exceed the global average temperature increase (ACIA, 2004; Groisman and Soja, 2009; IPCC, 2013; Miller et al, 2010). The TSP (Brown et al, 2010) and CALM (Shiklomanov et al, 2008) programs oversee the collection of permafrost temperature and active layer thickness data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions. These programs provide the majority of the content to the GTN-P Database (Fig. 1). Database is a state-of-the-art tool for storing, processing and sharing parameters relevant to the permafrost ECV measured in the Arctic, Antarctic and mountain regions It is hosted at the Arctic Portal in Akureyri (Iceland) and managed in close cooperation with the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), in Potsdam (Germany) and supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme project PAGE21. The specific objectives of this paper are (i) to describe the framework of the GTN-P Data Management System, (ii) to provide statistics on site distribution in the GTN-P by performing spatial analyses on the metadata, and (iii) to identify spatial gaps in the GTN-P site distribution and compare the results with relevant environmental geospatial data sets
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