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Effect of Soil Property Uncertainties on Permafrost Thaw Projections: a Calibration-Constrained Analysis

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Effect of Soil Property Uncertainties on Permafrost Thaw Projections: a Calibration-Constrained Analysis The Cryosphere, 10, 341–358, 2016 www.the-cryosphere.net/10/341/2016/ doi:10.5194/tc-10-341-2016 © Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Effect of soil property uncertainties on permafrost thaw projections: a calibration-constrained analysis D. R. Harp1, A. L. Atchley1, S. L. Painter2, E. T. Coon1, C. J. Wilson1, V. E. Romanovsky3, and J. C. Rowland1 1Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA 2Climate Change Science Institute, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA 3Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA Correspondence to: D. R. Harp ([email protected]) Received: 5 May 2015 – Published in The Cryosphere Discuss.: 29 June 2015 Revised: 15 January 2016 – Accepted: 19 January 2016 – Published: 11 February 2016 Abstract. The effects of soil property uncertainties on per- peat residual saturation. By comparing the ensemble statis- mafrost thaw projections are studied using a three-phase sub- tics to the spread of projected permafrost metrics using dif- surface thermal hydrology model and calibration-constrained ferent climate models, we quantify the relative magnitude uncertainty analysis. The null-space Monte Carlo method of soil property uncertainty to another source of permafrost is used to identify soil hydrothermal parameter combina- uncertainty, structural climate model uncertainty. We show tions that are consistent with borehole temperature measure- that the effect of calibration-constrained uncertainty in soil ments at the study site, the Barrow Environmental Obser- properties, although significant, is less than that produced by vatory. Each parameter combination is then used in a for- structural climate model uncertainty for this location. ward projection of permafrost conditions for the 21st century (from calendar year 2006 to 2100) using atmospheric forc- ings from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) in the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 green- house gas concentration trajectory. A 100-year projection al- 1 Introduction lows for the evaluation of predictive uncertainty (due to soil property (parametric) uncertainty) and the inter-annual cli- Increasing Arctic air and permafrost temperatures (Serreze mate variability due to year to year differences in CESM cli- et al., 2000; Jones and Moberg, 2003; Hinzman et al., 2002; mate forcings. After calibrating to measured borehole tem- Romanovsky et al., 2007), the resulting increase in the thick- perature data at this well-characterized site, soil property un- ness of soil that thaws on an annual basis (Romanovsky and certainties are still significant and result in significant pre- Osterkamp, 1995), and the potential for greenhouse gas re- dictive uncertainties in projected active layer thickness and lease due to the ensuing decomposition of previously frozen annual thaw depth-duration even with a specified future cli- organic carbon (Koven et al., 2011; Schaefer et al., 2011) mate. Inter-annual climate variability in projected soil mois- provide motivation for developing robust numerical projec- ture content and Stefan number are small. A volume- and tions of the thermal hydrological trajectory of Arctic tundra time-integrated Stefan number decreases significantly, indi- in a warming climate. Projections of permafrost thaw and the cating a shift in subsurface energy utilization in the future associated potential for greenhouse gas release from the ac- climate (latent heat of phase change becomes more impor- celerated decomposition of previously frozen carbon are sub- tant than heat conduction). Out of 10 soil parameters, ALT, ject to several sources of uncertainty, including (but not lim- annual thaw depth-duration, and Stefan number are highly ited to) structural uncertainties in the climate models; uncer- dependent on mineral soil porosity, while annual mean liq- tainty about the model forcings/inputs in the future (scenario uid saturation of the active layer is highly dependent on the uncertainty in the typology of Walker et al., 2003); paramet- mineral soil residual saturation and moderately dependent on ric uncertainties in soil and surface properties that control the downward propagation of thaw fronts; and structural uncer- Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 342 D. R. Harp et al.: Effect of soil property uncertainties on permafrost thaw projections tainties in the surface and subsurface thermal hydrological ample, Romanovsky and Osterkamp(1997) calibrate thermal models. soil properties using a purely conductive thermal model us- Previous efforts to characterize uncertainty in permafrost ing measured temperatures at several sites and Nicolsky et al. thaw projections have mostly focused on climate model (2009) perform a sensitivity analysis of a calibration (data structural uncertainties and climate model uncertainties, pre- assimilation) approach to identify its ability to recover ther- sumably because of an implicit assumption that those two mal soil properties using a 1-D thermal model and apply the sources of uncertainty overwhelm the other sources. How- calibration approach to several sites. Atchley et al.(2015) re- ever, recent large-scale model comparisons suggest that cently demonstrated an iterative approach for using site char- a substantial portion of projected permafrost uncertainties acterization data to simultaneously refine thermal hydrology is a result of structural model differences in land sur- model structure and estimate model parameters. Their ap- face/subsurface schemes (Slater and Lawrence, 2013; Koven proach was applied to the Barrow Environmental Observa- et al., 2013), particularly how subsurface thermal hydrologic tory, but could be used at other sites to improve model struc- processes are represented (Koven et al., 2013) rather than ture and parameter assignments in the regional or global con- simply climate variation. Although those studies focused on text. structural uncertainty in surface and subsurface models and Recognizing that permafrost projections are sensitive to not on soil property uncertainty, the reported sensitivity to subsurface model representations and that soil property un- the subsurface model suggests that uncertainty in soil prop- certainties may be reduced through characterization and pa- erties may also contribute significantly to overall uncertainty rameter estimation, a natural next step is to quantify how in thaw projections. such activities will impact overall uncertainties in permafrost The bulk hydrothermal properties of soil that control the thaw projections in comparison to other sources of uncer- active layer thickness (ALT, i.e., the depth of soil that thaws tainty. Here we address that question. Specifically, we con- on an annual basis) (Neumann, 1860; Stefan, 1891; Ro- sider how uncertainties in soil hydrothermal properties prop- manovsky and Osterkamp, 1997; Peters-Lidard et al., 1998; agate to uncertainties in numerical projections of permafrost Kurylyk et al., 2014) vary among sites and locally within a thaw at a well-characterized site. We go beyond a tradi- single site, in particular being sensitive to the local organic tional unconstrained uncertainty quantification and focus on matter content and bulk porosity (Letts et al., 2000; Price the residual uncertainties that remain after soil parameters et al., 2008; O’Donnell et al., 2009; Hinzman et al., 1991; have been carefully calibrated to borehole temperature data. Chadburn et al., 2015a). Langer et al.(2013) identify the The intent of the current work is to develop initial insights soil composition uncertainties, particularly the soil ice/water into how effective site characterization activities might be at content, to have the largest effect on ALT. Intermediate to reducing uncertainties associated with soil parameters. We large-scale thermal simulations of ALT are known to be sen- show that with the future climate specified and with the ad- sitive to soil properties (Hinzman et al., 1998; Rawlins et al., vantage of calibration targets from a well-characterized site, 2013). Because of this sensitivity, large-scale Earth system significant uncertainties remain in projected ALT and other models (ESMs) were recently updated to include layers of metrics important for carbon decomposition in the future moss and peat in order to better represent subsurface ther- climate. We evaluate both predictive uncertainty and inter- mal conditions (Beringer et al., 2001; Lawrence and Slater, annual climate variability. We show that this residual uncer- 2008; Wania et al., 2009; Subin et al., 2012; Ekici et al., tainty is significant, albeit less than that associated with un- 2014; Chadburn et al., 2015b). Despite the recognition of certainties in the future climate. soil property uncertainty and heterogeneity as important con- We focus on temperature data as they are one of the eas- tributors to uncertainties in permafrost conditions and extent, iest and most common types of soil data to collect at field global and regional studies that address permafrost future sites and are often used for early site characterization. While conditions and extent typically apply broad soil texture clas- many sites may have other types of measurements available, sifications, such as those defined by Clapp and Hornberger such as water and ice content measurements, many of these (1978) and Cosby et al.(1984), to parameterize soil proper- are more difficult to obtain at regular temporal intervals for ties (Lawrence
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