Arctic Land Surface Hydrology:
Moving Towards a Synthesis
PrincetonUniversity
December 4-6, 2006
Session Overview
• Introduction
• Project Overviews
– NEESPI: Terrestrial Water and Energy
Cycles
– NEESPI: Changing Lake/Wetland
Extent and Carbon Balance
– NSF: Arctic Synthesis
• Overarching science questions among
projects?
An integrated understanding of the terrestrial
water and energy cycles across the NEESPI
domain through observations and modeling
• Eric Wood, Princeton University
• Laura Bowling, Purdue University
• Alexander Oltchev, Severtsov Institute of
Evolution and Ecological Problems
• with N. Speranskaya, K. Tysentko, N.
Lemeshko, A. Sogavchev, N. Tchevakova,
J. Kurbatova, N. Vygodskaya, A. Varlagin,
and O. Panferov
Primary Science Question
• How have changes in climate, land
cover and water management in
northern Eurasia over the last halfcentury affected the land surface
hydrology and flood frequency, and
what are the impacts at regional to
continental scales?
Subsidiary Science Questions
• To what extent can observed changes in seasonal
discharge be attributed to land use change and water
management versus climate variability?
• What are the effects of anthropogenic activities such
as water and land management on water and energy
fluxes across the NEESPI domain and how are they
compounded by the presence of permafrost, snow,
and wetlands?
• How well can hydrologic processes related to
permafrost, land and wetland hydrology, and
impacts from land cover change and water
management be represented by our VIC LSM and
how can it be improved through the synthesis of
local field data and remote sensing observations?
• How does the hydroclimatology of the NEESPI
region relate to continental and global water and
energy cycle processes?
Work Plan
•
•
•
•
Model improvements
Data preparation & analysis
Model testing and evaluation
Retrospective reconstruction of water & energy
balance
• Large-scale
diagnostic and
teleconnection
studies
(Bartalev et al., 2003)
Modeling
• Improved modeling of wetlands and
lakes to deal with thaw lakes
• Retrospective reconstruction of water
and energy balance (1950-2000)
• Project future water and energy
balance and the implications for
water resources
Data Sets
• Ground-based observations
– Soil moisture, evaporation, snow melt
– Tower flux data from the Upper Volga
catchment in the Central Forest
Biosphere Reserve
• Meteorological Forcing Data
– 50-year, 1-degree, observation-based
data set developed at Princeton and the
University of Washington
– GLDAS for near real-time simulations
– ERA-40 Reanalysis
Data Sets
• Satellite Data
– Understand the state of the land surface
(snow extent, freeze/thaw process)
– Provide inputs to terrestrial waterenergy modeling (land cover and its
change)
– Evaluate/validate the VIC model
simulations through snow extent and its
evolution
Large Scale Diagnostic &
Teleconnection Studies
Precipitation
Temperature
Strong positive correlation
at high latitudes and southern US
Soil Moisture
-0.6
SWE
0
0.6
-0.6
0
Correlation of DJF average states with CRU NAO index
0.6
Collaborative research: Understanding
change in the climate and hydrology of
the Arctic land region, synthesizing the
results of the ARCSS Fresh Water
Initiative Projects
•
•
•
•
Eric Wood
Dennis Lettenmaier
John Cassano
Charles Vörösmarty
Science Questions
• How do changes in arctic land
processes affect the climate of the
region?
• What are the implications of these
changes for the arctic hydrologic cycle
(including coupling and feedbacks with
the atmosphere)?
• What are the impacts of changes in the
arctic freshwater system on global
climate?
Science Questions
•
•
How can the results from the FWI
studies be used to better understand the
hydrologic processes affecting observed
change in the freshwater balance of the
pan arctic land system?
To what extent are the observed changes
in Arctic terrestrial hydrologic cycle due
to imported change from other regions
(via atmospheric processes), and to what
extent are the observed terrestrial
hydrologic changes exported to the
atmosphere and to the ocean system?
Scientific Perspective
Figure 1: Time series of discharge of the Yenesei and Ob
Rivers over the last 50 years.
Conflicting Explanations for Discharge Trends
Increased northward atmospheric
moisture transport
Nijssen et al. (2001), Wu et al.
(2005), Arnel (2005)
Human effects (reservoir
construction)
Yang et al. (2004), Ye et al.
(2003), McClelland et al. (2004)
Release of water from permafrost
degradation
Frauenfield et al. (2004), Zhang et
al. (2003), Ye et al. (2003)
Climate-induced changes to the
land surface (increased fire
frequency)
McClelland et al. (2004), Conrad
and Ivanova (1997)
Changes in lake areal extent and
storage
Smith et al. (2005)
Change in evapotranspiration
Gedney et al. (2006)
Change in snow accumulation /
ablation patterns
Brown (2000), Groisman et al.
(1994), Robinson et al. (1990)
FWI Projects of Interest
Larry Hinzman
(University of Alaska)
Int’l observation system for key hydrologic fluxes
& state variables; Used for parameterizations
Doug Kane
(University of Alaska)
Compile data into electronic data base. Used to
force model & evaluate model performance
Dennis Lettenmaier
(Univ. of Washington)
Performed VIC runs over pan-arctic; assembled
forcing & evaluation data sets
Glen Liston
(Colorado State Univ.)
Field campaign to measure surface fluxes. Used to
evaluate VIC sublimation algorithm
Igor Semiletov
(University of Alaska)
Evaluate inter-annual and intra-seasonal variability
of atmospheric forcings over Siberia.
Mark Serreze
Multi-model hindcast of pan-arctic land surface
conditions.
FWI Projects of Interest
Laurence Smith
(UCLA)
Disappearance of lakes over parts of Siberia
over the last 30 years
Charles Vörösmarty
(UNH)
Extension of Arctic-RIMS data set
Daqing Yang
(University of
Alaska)
Constructing bias-adjusted data, used for
offline forcings
Tingjun Zhang
(Univ. of Colorado)
Changes in freeze-thaw and permafrost
dynamics, data used for evaluation of
permafrost algorithm
Tony England
(Univ. of Michigan)
Remote sensing estimates of active layer depth,
used to evaluate model estimates
Marika Holland
Global coupled model results to evaluate UVic
model
Approach
• Arctic-RIMS
• VIC with Cold Land Updates
• University of Washington MultiModel Ensemble Prediction System
• Regional Climate Models
– Polar MM5 / WRF
• UVic Earth System Climate Model
Work Plan
• Enhancement of Artic-RIMS with model
integration output
• Workshops & Chapman Conference
• Evaluate and improve hydrologic
parameterizations using FWI data
• Uncoupled, partially coupled, and fully
coupled regional model feedback studies
• Global simulations to evaluate
teleconnections associated with arctic
freshwater change
• Exploratory 21st century scenario analysis
Arctic-RIMS
Science Questions
Where they intersect
Crossover Areas
• Lake/wetland extent and effect on
hydrology
• Permafrost active layer depth
– Effect on wetlands & carbon
– Effect on land surface hydrology
• Changes in land surface hydrologic
processes & their effect on the
region’s climate
• Land cover changes