Articles | Volume 12, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-4443-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-4443-2019
Development and technical paper
 | 
24 Oct 2019
Development and technical paper |  | 24 Oct 2019

Improving permafrost physics in the coupled Canadian Land Surface Scheme (v.3.6.2) and Canadian Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (v.2.1) (CLASS-CTEM)

Joe R. Melton, Diana L. Verseghy, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, and Stephan Gruber

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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. a, b
Arora, V., Seglenieks, F., Kouwen, N., and Soulis, E.: Scaling aspects of river flow routing, Hydrol. Process., 15, 461–477, https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.161, 2001. a
Bartlett, P. A., MacKay, M. D., and Verseghy, D. L.: Modified snow algorithms in the Canadian land surface scheme: Model runs and sensitivity analysis at three boreal forest stands, Atmos.-Ocean, 44, 207–222, https://doi.org/10.3137/ao.440301, 2006. a
Beer, C., Porada, P., Ekici, A., and Brakebusch, M.: Effects of short-term variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in permafrost regions, The Cryosphere, 12, 741–757, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-741-2018, 2018. a
Bellisario, L. M., Boudreau, L. D., Verseghy, D. L., Rouse, W. R., and Blanken, P. D.: Comparing the performance of the Canadian land surface scheme (CLASS) for two subarctic terrain types, Atmos.-Ocean, 38, 181–204, https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2000.9649645, 2000. a
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Short summary
Soils in cold regions store large amounts of carbon that could be released to the atmosphere if the soils thaw. To best simulate these soils, we explored different configurations and parameterizations of the CLASS-CTEM model and compared to observations. The revised model with a deeper soil column, new soil depth dataset, and inclusion of moss simulated greatly improved annual thaw depths and ground temperatures. We estimate subgrid-scale features limit further improvements against observations.
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