High Spatial Resolution Modeling of the Ground Temperature Dynamics in the Seward Peninsula

Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks previously used the GIPL2 model to simulate ground temperatures at 18 sites across the Seward Peninsula. A comparison of those simulations to field observations using a data assimilation technique was encouraging. Here, researchers focused on validating the modeling results and simulating a spatial distribution of the permafrost and ground temperature for the entire Seward Peninsula with a resolution of 500 meters from 1900 to 2100. The future climate in the simulations was taken from a downscaled composite average of five GCMs runs for the RCP 4.5 scenario, while the CRU gridded precipitation and temperature observations downscaled with the PRISM algorithm were used to provide boundary conditions from 1901 to 2013. We demonstrated that the model validation shows an acceptable metrics when compared to observed data.