Abstract
Climatic changes at the Earth's surface propagate slowly downward into theground and modify the ambient ground thermal regime. However, causes of soiltemperature changes in the upper few meters are not well documented. One majorobstacle to understanding the linkage between the soil thermal regime andclimatic change is the lack of long-term observations of soil temperatures andrelated climatic variables. Such measurements were made throughout the formerSoviet Union with some records beginning at the end of the 19th century. Inthis paper, we use records from Irkutsk, Russia, to demonstrate how the soiltemperature responded to climatic changes over the last century. Both airtemperature and precipitation at Irkutsk increased from the late 1890s to the1990s. Changes in air temperature mainly occurred in winter, while changes inprecipitation happened mainly during summer. There was an anti-correlationbetween mean annual air temperature and annual total precipitation, i.e., more(less) precipitation during cold (warm) years. There were no significanttrends of changes in the first day of snow on the ground in autumn, but snowsteadily disappeared earlier in spring, resulting in a reduction of the snowcover duration. A grass-covered soil experiences seasonal freezing for morethan nine months each year and the long-term average maximum depth ofseasonally frozen soils was about 177 cm with a range from 91 cm to 260 cm.The relatively lower soil temperature at shallow depths appears to representthe so-called `thermal offset' in seasonally frozen soils. Changes in meanannual air temperature and soil temperature at 40 cm depth were about the samemagnitude (2.0 °C to 2.5 °C) over the common period of record, but thepatterns of change were substantially different. Mean annual air temperatureincreased slightly until the 1960s, while mean annual soil temperatureincreased steadily throughout the entire period. This leads to the conclusionthat changes in air temperature alone cannot explain the changes in soiltemperatures at this station. Soil temperature actually decreased duringsummer months by up to 4 °C, while air temperature increased slightly.This cooling in the soil may be explained by changes in rainfall and hencesoil moisture during summer due to the effect of a soil moisture feedbackmechanism. While air temperature increased about 4 °C to 6 °C duringwinter, soil temperature increased by up to 9 °C. An increase in snowfallduring early winter (October and November) and early snowmelt in spring mayplay a major role in the increase of soil temperatures through the effects ofinsulation and albedo changes. Due to its relatively higher thermalconductivity compared to unfrozen soils, seasonally frozen ground may enhancethe soil cooling, especially in autumn and winter when thermal gradient isnegative.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anisimov, O. A. and Nelson, F. E.: 1996, ‘Permafrost Distribution in the Northern Hemisphere under Scenarios of Climatic Change’, Global Planet. Change 14, 59–72.
Barry, R. G.: 1992, Mountain Weather and Climate, 2nd edn., Routledge, London, p. 401.
Beltrami, H. and Marreschal, J. C.: 1991, ‘Recent Warming in Eastern Canada: Evidence from Geothermal Measurements’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 18, 605–608.
Beltrami, H. and Taylor, A. E.: 1995, ‘Records of Climatic Change in the Canadian Arctic: Towards Calibrating Oxygen Isotope Data with Geothermal Data’, Global Planet. Change 11, 127–138.
Birch, F.: 1948, ‘The Effects of Pleistocene Climatic Variation upon Geothermal Gradients’, Amer. J. Sci. 246, 729–760.
Brown, J.: 1982, ‘Permafrost’, in Walker, D. A., Everett, K. R., Webber, P. J., and Brown, J. (eds.), Geobotanical Atlas of the Prudhoe Bay Region, CRREL Report 80–14.
Burn, C. R. and Smith, C. A. S.: 1988, ‘Observations of the ‘Thermal Offset’ in Near-Surface Mean Annual Ground Temperatures at Several Sites near Mayo, Yukon Territory, Canada’, Arctic 41, 99–104.
De Vries, D. A.: 1963, ‘Thermal Properties of Soils’, in Van Wijk, W. R. (ed.), Physics of Plant Environment,North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 5–28.
Gilichinsky, D. A., Barry, R., Bykhovets, S. S., Sorokovikov, V. A., Zhang, T., Zudin, S. L., and Fedorov-Davydov, D. G.: 1998, ‘A Century of Temperature Observations of Soil Climate: Methods of Analysis and Long-Term Trends’, in Lewkowicz, A. G. and Allard, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Permafrost, 23–27 June 1998, Yellowknife, Canada, Collection Nordicana, No. 57, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada, pp. 313–317.
Goodrich, L. E.: 1978, ‘Some Results of a Numerical Study of Ground Thermal Regimes’, in Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Permafrost, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Vol. 1, pp. 29–34.
Goodrich, L. E.: 1982, ‘The Influence of Snow Cover on the Ground Thermal Regime’, Can. Geotech. J. 19, 421–432.
Gosnold, W. D., Toghunter, P. E., and Schmidt, W.: 1997, ‘The Borehole Temperature Record of Climatic Warming in the Mid-Continent of North America’, Global Planet. Change 15, 33–45.
Groismann, P. Y., Kornaeva, V. V., Belokrylova, T. A., and Karl, T. R.: 1991, ‘Overcoming Biases of Precipitation Measurement: A History of the U.S.S.R. Experience’, Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 72, 1725–1733.
Harris, R. N. and Chapman, S. D.: 1997, ‘Borehole Temperatures and a Baseline for 20th-Century Global Warming Estimates’, Science 275, 1618–1621.
Hotchkiss, W. O. and Ingersoll, L. R.: 1934, ‘Post-Glacial Time Calculations from Recent Geothermal Measurements in the Calumet Copper Mines’, J. Geol. 42, 113–142.
Houghton, J. T., Meiro Filho, L. G., Callander, B. A., Harris, N., Kattenberg, A., and Maskell, K. (eds.): 1996, Climate Change 1995; The Science of Climatic Change: Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climatic Change, Cambridge University Press, New York, p. 584.
Huang, S., Pollack, H. N., and Shen, P. Y.: 1997, ‘Late Quaternary Temperature Change Seen in World-Wide Continental Heat Flow Measurements’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 24, 1947–1950.
Kane, D. L., Hinzman, L. D., and Zarling, J. P.: 1991, ‘Thermal Response of the Active Layer to Climatic Warming in a Permafrost Environment’, Cold Regions Sci. Technol. 19, 111–122. 74 T. ZHANG ET AL.
Koh, G. and Jordan, R.: 1995, ‘Sub-Surface Melting in a Seasonal Snow Cover’, J. Glaciol. 41, 474–482.
Kudryavtsev, V. A.: 1954, Temperature of Upper Horizons of Permafrost Layers in the U.S.S.R., AN SSSR, Moscow.
Kudryavtsev, V. A., Garagula, L. S., Kondrat'yeva, K. A., and Melamed, V. G.: 1974, Osnovy Merzlotnogo Prognoza, MGU, p. 431. CRREL translation: Kudryavtsev, V. A. et al. (1977), Fundamentals of Frost Forecasting in Geological Engineering Investigations, CRREL draft translation 606, p. 489.
Lachenbruch, A. H. and Marshall, B. V.: 1986, ‘Changing Climate: Geothermal Evidence from Permafrost in the Alaskan Arctic’, Science 234, 689–696.
Lachenbruch, A. H., Brewer, M. C., Greene, G. W., and Marshall, B. V.: 1962, ‘Temperatures in Permafrost’, in Temperature - Its Measurement and Control in Science and Industry, Vol. 3, Part 1, Reinhold Publishing Co., New York, pp. 791–803.
Lane, A. C.: 1923, ‘Geotherms from the Lake Superior Copper Country’, Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer. 34, 703–720.
Lauscher, F.: 1976, ‘Methods for a Global Climatology of Hydrometeors: The Percentage of Solid Precipitation’, Archiv Meteorologie, Geophysik und Bioklimatologie, Ser. B. 24, 129–176 (in German with English summary).
Matsuyama, H. and Masuda, K.: 1998, ‘Seasonal/Interannual Variations of Soil Moisture in the Former U.S.S.R. and Its Relationship to Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall’, J. Climate 11, 652–658.
Nelson, F. E., Lachenbruch, A. H., Woo, M.-K., Koster, E. A., Osterkamp, T. E., Gavrilova, M. K., and Cheng, G.: 1993, ‘Permafrost and Changing Climate’, in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Permafrost, Vol. 2, July 5–9, 1993 ijing, China, South China University of Technology Press, pp. 987–1005.
Nicholson, F. H. and Granberg, H. B.: 1973, ‘Permafrost and Snow Cover Relationships near Schefferville’, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Permafrost, North American Contribution, Yakutsk, U.S.S.R., 13–28 July 1973, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., pp. 151–158.
Osterkamp, T. E. and Lachenbruch, A. H.: 1990, ‘Thermal Regime of Permafrost in Alaska and Predicted Global Warming’, Cold Regions Sci. Engineer. 4, 38–42.
Osterkamp, T. E., Zhang, T., and Romanovsky, V. E.: 1994, ‘Evidence for a Cyclic Variation of Permafrost Temperatures in Northern Alaska’, Permafrost Periglacial Proc. 5, 137–144.
Outcalt, S. I., Nelson, F. E., and Hinkel, K. M.: 1990, ‘The Zero-Curtain Effect: Heat and Mass Transfer Across an Isothermal Region in Freezing Soil’, Water Resour. Res. 26, 1509–1516.
Overpeck, J., Hughen, K., Hardy, D., Bradley, R., Case, R., Douglas, M., Finney, B., Gajewski, K., Jacoby, G., Jennings, A., Lamoureux, S., Lasca, A., MacDonald, G., Moore, J., Retelle, M., Smith, S., Wolfe, A., and Zielinski, G.: 1997, ‘Arctic Environmental Change of the Last Four Centuries’, Science 278, 1251–1256.
Pavlov, A. V.: 1994, ‘Current Change of Climate and Permafrost in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic of Russia’, Permafrost Periglacial Proc. 5, 101–110.
Pavlov, A. V.: 1996, ‘Permafrost-Climatic Monitoring of Russia: Analysis of Field Data and Forecast, Polar Geog. Geol. 20, 44–64.
Permafrost Subcommittee: 1988, Glossary of Permafrost and Related Ground-Ice Terms, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, p. 156.
Pollack, H. N. and Chapman, D. S.: 1993, ‘Underground Records of Changing Climate’, Scient. Amer. 268, 44–50.
Pollack, H. N., Huang, S., and Shen, P.-Y.: 1998, ‘Climate Change Record in Subsurface Temperatures: A Global Perspective’, Science 282, 279–281. AN AMPLIFIED SIGNAL OF CLIMATIC CHANGE IN SOIL TEMPERATURES 75
Romanovsky, V. E. and Osterkamp, T. E.: 1995, ‘Interannual Variations of the Thermal Regime of the Active Layer and Near-Surface Permafrost in Northern Alaska’, Permafrost Periglacial Proc. 6, 313–335.
Ross, B. and Walsh, J. E.: 1986, ‘Synoptic-Scale Influence of Snow-Cover and Sea Ice’, Mon. Wea. Rev. 114, 1795–1810.
Sankar-Rao, M., Lau, K.M., and Yang, S.: 1996, ‘On the Relationship between Eurasian Snow Cover and the Asian Summer Monsoon’, Int. J. Clim. 16, 605–616.
Serreze, M. C., Clark, M. P., Robinson, D. A., and McGinnis, D. L.: 1998, ‘Characteristics of Snowfall over the Eastern Half of the United States and Relationships with Principal Modes of Low Frequency Atmospheric Variability’, J. Climate 11, 234–250.
Serreze, M. C., Walsh, J. E., Chapin, F. S., Osterkamp, T., Dyurgerov, M., Romanovsky, V., Oechel, W. C., Morison, J., Zhang, T., and Barry, R.: 2000, ‘Observational Evidence of Recent Change in the Northern High-Latitude Environment’, Clim. Change 46, 159–207.
Sharratt, B. S.: 1992, ‘Growing Season Trends in the Alaskan Climate Record’, Arctic 45, 124–127.
Shen, P. Y. and Beck, A. E.: 1992, ‘Paleoclimate Change and Heat Flow Density Inferred from Temperature Data in the Superior Province of the Canadian Shield’, Global Planet. Change 6, 143–165.
Smith, M. W.: 1975, ‘Microclimatic Influence on Ground Temperature and Permafrost Distribution, Mackenzie Delta, Northwest Territories’, Can. J. Earth Sci. 12, 1421–1438.
State Committee of the U.S.S.R. for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control: 1960–1964, ‘Soil Temperature, Fog, Thunderstorm, Blizzards and Hail’, Vol. 1–2, Part VII in The Climatological Handbook of the U.S.S.R. Annual Meteorological Data, Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad.
State Committee of the U.S.S.R. for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control: 1964–1972, Climatological Handbook of the U.S.S.R. The History and Physical-Geographical Description of the Meteorological Stations and Posts, Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad.
State Committee of the U.S.S.R. for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control: 1970–1978, ‘Soil Temperatures, 1970–1978’, Vol. 1–34, Part VIII in Handbook of the Climate of the U.S.S.R. Annual Meteorological Data, Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad.
State Committee of the U.S.S.R. for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control: 1966–1990, The Monthly Meteorological Report, Vols. 1–36, Part II, Numbers 1–13, Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad.
State Committee of the U.S.S.R. for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control: 1985, ‘Instructions for Meteorological Stations and Posts’, Vol. 3, Part 1 in Meteorological Observations at Stations, Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad.
Takata, K. and Kimoto, M.: 1988, ‘Impact of Soil Freezing on the Continental-Scale Seasonal Cycle Simulated by a General CirculationModel’, in Lewkowicz, A. G. and Allard, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Permafrost, 23–27 June 1998, Yellowknife, Canada, Collection Nordicana, No. 57, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada, pp. 1035–1041.
Taylor, A. E.: 1991, ‘Holocene Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction from Deep Ground Temperatures: A Comparison with Paleoclimate Derived from theδ18O Record in an Ice Core from the Agassiz Ice Cap, Canadian Arctic Archipelago’, J. Glaciol. 37, 209–219.
Xin, L., Guodong, C., and Xianzhang, C.: 1998, ‘Response of Permafrost to Global Change on The Qinghai-Xizang Plateau - A GIS-Aided Model’, in Lewkowicz, A. G. and Allard, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Permafrost, 23–27 June 1998, Yellowknife, Canada, Collection Nordicana, No. 57, University of Laval, Quebeck, Canada, pp. 657–661.
Yasunari, T., Kitoh, A., and Tokioka, T.: 1991, ‘Local and Remote Responses to Excessive Snow Mass over Eurasia Appearing in the Northern Spring and Summer Climate - A Study with the MRI-GCM’, J. Meteorol. Soc. Japan 69, 473–487.
Zhang, T.: 1993, Climate, Seasonal Snow Cover and Permafrost Temperatures in Alaska North of the Brooks Range, Ph.D. Dissertation, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, p. 232. 76 T. ZHANG ET AL.
Zhang, T. and Osterkamp, T. E.: 1993, ‘Changing Climate and Permafrost Temperatures in the Alaskan Arctic’, in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Permafrost, Vol. 1, Beijing, China, 5–9 July 1993, South China University of Technology Press, pp. 783–788.
Zhang, T., Osterkamp, T. E., and Stamnes, K.: 1996, ‘Some Characteristics of the Climate in Northern Alaska’, Arct. Alp. Res. 28, 509–518.
Zhang, T., Osterkamp, T. E., and Stamnes, K.: 1997a, ‘Effects of Climate on the Active Layer and Permafrost on the North Slope of Alaska, U.S.A.’, Permafrost Periglacial Proc. 8, 45–67.
Zhang, T., Bowling, S. A., and Stamnes, K.: 1997b, ‘Impact of the Atmosphere on Surface Radiative Fluxes and Snowmelt in the Arctic and Subarctic’, J. Geophys. Res. 102, 4287–4302. (Received 17 May 1999; in revised form 3 August 2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, T., Barry, R.G., Gilichinsky, D. et al. An Amplified Signal of Climatic Change in Soil Temperatures during the Last Century at Irkutsk, Russia. Climatic Change 49, 41–76 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010790203146
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010790203146