Articles | Volume 13, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2087-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2087-2019
Research article
 | 
01 Aug 2019
Research article |  | 01 Aug 2019

Permafrost variability over the Northern Hemisphere based on the MERRA-2 reanalysis

Jing Tao, Randal D. Koster, Rolf H. Reichle, Barton A. Forman, Yuan Xue, Richard H. Chen, and Mahta Moghaddam

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Cited articles

Alexeev, V. A., Nicolsky, D. J., Romanovsky, V. E., and Lawrence, D. M.: An evaluation of deep soil configurations in the CLM3 for improved representation of permafrost, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L09502, https://doi.org/10.1029/2007gl029536, 2007. 
Anisimov, O. A. and Reneva, S.: Permafrost and changing climate: The Russian perspective, Ambio, 35, 169–175, https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447(2006)35[169:Pacctr]2.0.Co;2, 2006. 
Anisimov, O. A.: Potential feedback of thawing permafrost to the global climate system through methane emission, Environ. Res. Lett., 2, 045016, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/2/4/045016, 2007. 
Anisimov, O. A., Lobanov, V. A., Reneva, S. A., Shiklomanov, N. I., Zhang, T., and Nelson, F. E.: Uncertainties in gridded air temperature fields and effects on predictive active layer modeling, J. Geophys. Res.-Earth, 112, F02S14, https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JF000593, 2007. 
Barman, R. and Jain, A. K.: Comparison of effects of cold-region soil/snow processes and the uncertainties from model forcing data on permafrost physical characteristics, J. Adv. Model. Earth Sy., 8, 453–466, 2016. 
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Short summary
The active layer thickness (ALT) in middle-to-high northern latitudes from 1980 to 2017 was produced at 81 km2 resolution by a global land surface model (NASA's CLSM) with forcing fields from a reanalysis data set, MERRA-2. The simulated permafrost distribution and ALTs agree reasonably well with an observation-based map and in situ measurements, respectively. The accumulated above-freezing air temperature and maximum snow water equivalent explain most of the year-to-year variability of ALT.