HR: 10:25h
AN: C12A-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Spatially Distributed Permafrost Models: Current Status, Problems and Needs
AU: * Shiklomanov, N I
EM: shiklom@udel.edu
AF: University of Delaware, Department of Geography, University of Delaware, , Newakr, DE 19716 United States
AU: Anisimov, O A
EM: oleg@oa7661.spb.edu
AF: State Hydrological Institute, Second line, 23, St. Petersburg, 199053 Russian Federation
AU: Romanovsky, V E
EM: ffver@uaf.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute UAF, 903 Koyukuk Drive P.O.Box 757320 , Fairbanks, AK 99775 United States
AU: Zhang, T
EM: tzhang@nsidc.org
AF: NSIDC/CIRES, 1540 30th Street University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 United States
AB: Permafrost is a central element of the cryospheric system. Its importance has become increasingly recognized in both scientific literature and popular media, especially in the last few years. The past two decades have seen a dramatic rise in the number of permafrost models used to evaluate permafrost parameters over geographic space, as well as spatial changes in permafrost-related phenomena that may follow from global climate change. Despite the importance of its roles in the geological, ecological, engineering, and climate-change sciences, modeling of permafrost has, for the most part, remained the domain of individuals and small groups of scientists, each utilizing its own methodological approach, resulting in a wide range of results. This situation has made it difficult to incorporate generated data sets and modelling products into the larger global-change research enterprise. Consequently, there has been little effort to develop an explicit hierarchy of permafrost models, to evaluate their performance using standardized validation tools and data sets, to rank the performance of various models in different applications and to explicitly link modeling results with observations. As a result, considerable uncertainties remain regarding appropriate methods for describing the ground thermal regime spatially, their accuracy, and their applicability to different scales and climatic conditions. To address these problems the Workshop on Spatially Distributed Modeling and Remote Sensing of Permafrost was held in Fairbanks, Alaska in October 2004. The main objectives of the workshop were: 1) access the current status of available permafrost models and observations and 2) develop a framework for intercomparison of spatially oriented approaches to permafrost modeling at a variety of geographical scales. This presentation provides an overview of the current status of permafrost modeling and report on recent activity aimed at intercomparison of permafrost models.
DE: 1823 Frozen ground
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting