Global Performance of a Parsimonious Soil Temperature Model for Frozen Ground Prediction


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Owners: Donghui Li
Type: Resource
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Created: Jan 15, 2025 at 1:25 a.m.
Last updated: Jan 15, 2025 at 10:02 p.m.
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Abstract

This HydroShare Resorce provides the scripts for data retrievel and processing, model running and postanalysis, and figure creation for the manuscript under review by JOH. The abstract of the manuscript is as follows: Seasonal soil freezing and thawing processes significantly influence runoff generation dynamics during cold periods, affecting various hydrological and agricultural systems, including flood generation, soil erosion, and plant health. Representing frozen soil conditions in land surface or hydrological models is therefore crucial. While fully distributed models implement the process by solving energy-mass balance equations to obtain soil temperature profiles, parsimonious models using “snow tanks” or frozen ground states can provide suitable modeling solutions with reduced computational demands. However, even these parsimonious approaches to representing frozen ground typically require some additional complexity through additional inputs or surface energy balance calculations. This study evaluates the applicability of a simplified soil temperature prediction model that determines frozen/unfrozen ground states using only air temperature and snow cover data, reducing model complexity. We first validate the model performance using AmeriFlux network in-situ measurements across the United States and Canada. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive assessment at the global scale with ERA5-LAND reanalysis data (1980-2020). The model demonstrates robust performance globally, achieving an average true frozen rate of 0.90 and false frozen rate of 0.06. We also investigate the model performance by month, and, while monthly analyses show drops in model performance for certain months, these lower scores are primarily due to the limited number of freeze-thaw events during these periods, which makes the model appear less accurate than it actually is. In terms of spatial performance, the model shows reduced accuracy in mountainous regions, including the Tibetan Plateau, Rocky Mountains, and Andes, suggesting the need for region-specific parameter calibration in orographic settings. Nevertheless, this parsimonious soil temperature model demonstrates significant potential as a computationally efficient solution for incorporating frozen ground effects in distributed hydrological models with simple conceptual runoff generation schemes.

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
North Latitude
90.0000°
East Longitude
180.0000°
South Latitude
-65.0000°
West Longitude
-180.0000°
Leaflet Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

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Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
Agency Name Award Title Award Number
Princeton University

How to Cite

Li, D. (2025). Global Performance of a Parsimonious Soil Temperature Model for Frozen Ground Prediction, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/eb6c57da63ec4742852d4583894aa9df

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CC-BY

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