Arctic Warming: A Perspective from the Underground
- 1Department of Remote Sensing, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), 04318 Leipzig, Germany.
- 2Climate & Atmospheric Sciences Institute, St. Francis Xavier University, B2G 2W5 Antigonish, Canada.
- 3Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, University of Geneva, 1202, Geneva, Switzerland.
- 4Haute école de gestion de Genève, Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale, 1227, Geneva, Switzerland.
- 5Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada.
The thermal regime of the Arctic subsurface is important, for example, in the context of greenhouse-gas release from thawing permafrost soils. Measurements of Arctic subsurface temperatures, however, are scarce and limited in time, with virtually no observations over climatological time scales. We address this gap in knowledge by estimating the long-term evolution of subsurface temperatures in the Arctic (north of 60ºN) since 1600 Common Era (CE) to the present using 110 deep subsurface temperature profiles. The Arctic subsurface has warmed by 1.7±0.8 ºC during 1970-2000 CE. These estimates are conservative, as the effects of latent heat are not included in the analysis. Although there are significant spatial variations, the Arctic subsurface is warming faster than the global land surface and subsurface (1.2±0.2 ºC) during the same period. Uncertainties in this analysis arise mostly from deficient knowledge about the subsurface physical properties and limited data coverage.
How to cite: Cuesta-Valero, F. J., Beltrami, H., García-García, A., Jaume-Santero, F., and Gruber, S.: Arctic Warming: A Perspective from the Underground, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-1838, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-1838, 2022.
