Appendix VII: Five-year GTN-P Plan and Background Information

A proposal was prepared in June 1999 for the development of a long-term, well-coordinated international network of permafrost observatories that will document ground temperature changes, and thus provide the data for testing models and scenarios of cryospheric changes and resulting impacts.

Site selection. The basic objective of site selection is to obtain sound regional and global coverage while taking maximum advantage of existing facilities. The initial role of the permafrost network (GTN-P) is primarily to assess and detect long-term climate change through its impact on the permafrost, particularly on a regional basis. Although the network is not intended to monitor sites with human disturbances, including construction, some sites with minimal disturbances may be acceptable if long-term monitoring is guaranteed.

The first steps in site selection of permafrost boreholes were taken in 1998. The permafrost communities, both individuals and national IPA representatives, were requested by the IPA to identify existing boreholes that were available for future measurements. Over 250 locations were identified. Each site was assigned to one of four depth classes.

Additional sites were identified by Russian colleagues at the April 1999 cryosphere monitoring conference in Pushchino. In general, to detect and reconstruct climate history for the last several decades we will need information on the permafrost temperature regime at a minimum of 20 m, but depths of 40 to 60 m are preferable. Profiles of the permafrost temperature at depths of several hundred metres will be needed to investigate climate history during the post-Little Ice Age period.

The next step in site selection is to describe potential boreholes according to a standard set of descriptors. These site metadata descriptions were discussed and agreed to in Pushchino. We are in the process of gathering this information and it should be available by the end of 1999. Based on the metadata information, an initial set of sites will be identified in accordance with the following GCOS criteria:

• each participating country should identify sites representative of its own longitudinal, latitudinal and altitudinal permafrost zones;

• collection, documentation, and distribution of appropriate data should be ensured on a sustained and timely fashion;

• generally accepted, well-documented methodologies should be employed.

Sites in under-represented systems should have priority over those in already represented systems. Existing sites are preferred over sites without instrumental or observational records.

The formal selection process will start at the meeting of the AGU from 13 to 17 December1999, to be attended by North American GTN-P participants. We will review site information and refine selection criteria. The process will continue via email and be completed at the annual Pushchino permafrost conference scheduled for mid-May 2000. At this time it is difficult to say how many sites will be included in the network, but certainly most existing sites in North America and Europe (PACE) can be included.

The near-surface permafrost temperature regime (20 to 200 m) is a sensitive indicator of the interannual and decade-to-century climatic variability and long-term changes in the surface energy balance. Twenty-five percent of the land mass of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permafrost with over half of it at temperatures a few degrees below 0°C. Global permafrost zones span many physiographic regions, including vast expanses of northern lowlands, high elevations in mountains, and plateaus from high to low latitudes. Predicted increases in mean annual air temperature of several degrees in northern latitudes will lead to thawing and destabilisation of perennially frozen ground. In the mountains, warming and thawing result in increased slope instability. Permafrost degradation has important implications for many landscape processes (terrain, slope and coastal stability), hydrology (surface and groundwater regimes), surface characteristics (vegetation, albedo), greenhouse gas sources and sinks (peatlands, soils, gas hydrates), as well as for ecosystems, engineering and infrastructure.

In order to understand the status and changes in the permafrost areas of the Earth, an effective international global monitoring strategy is required. It will provide field observations essential for the comprehensive detection of the terrestrial climate change signal and for the assessment of its lag and attenuation, as well as indications of the spatial variability of change across the high latitudes and mountains of both hemispheres. This information is critical not only for the improvement of predictive models and the reliability of impact assessments including that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but also to further understand the sensitivity of permafrost conditions and processes to climate variability and change.

Standardise instrumentation and observations. There are two general methods for measuring temperatures in boreholes: (1) periodically lowering a calibrated thermistor into a liquid filled borehole and measuring temperature at descending intervals; and (2) recording temperatures over time with a permanently or semi-permanently installed multisensor thermistor cable. In either case the precision of the measurement can be from 0.1°C to 0.01°C, depending on the thermistor calibration. The second method involves greater initial cost for the cable. Both methods are used in North America. The PACE programme uses the recording cable system with provisions to retrieve and recalibrate the cable. The multisensor approach is generally workable for holes less than 100 m deep and allows for the installation of data logger systems. Although these systems introduce an additional cost, they often more than offset the costs associated with more frequent visits for data collections at remote sites.

A detailed measurement protocol, based on existing methodologies, will be developed in the first year. For GTN-P, the minimum requirement will be to use the calibrated single thermistor once a year, although monthly measurements accompanied by observations of snow conditions are optimal. This calibrated cable can be used in multiple holes by the same person or organisation. To ensure acquisition of standard data and quality, we propose to provide one calibrated thermistor cable and meter to each of approximately 15 sites or organisations in Argentina, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia. Air and near-surface temperatures will be recorded at most sites using inexpensive data loggers as employed at many CALM sites. In return for the equipment and related support, we will require [expect] each site to report data annually.

The candidate organisations or sites requiring instruments are:

• Argentina - Geocryology Unit, (IANIGLA), Mendoza

• China - Institute of Cold and Arid Regions Environments and Engineering, Lanzhou

• Kazakhstan - Alpine Geocryological Laboratory, Alamty

• Mongolia - Institute of Geography and Geocryology, Ulanbator

• Russia - multiple sites by region: European North, Vorkuta, West Siberia, Sahka, Lower Kolyma, Magadan, Trans Baikal.

Temporal variability in the snow cover thickness and/or snow thermal properties can affect the permafrost temperature dynamics within decadal-to-century time scale. We propose that snow cover characteristics (depth and density) be observed in close proximity to the boreholes at sites that can have repeat winter observations. Alternatively we will rely on climate records (monthly mean) from the meteorological stations nearest the borehole. Analytical and numerical models allow the analysis of the separate air temperature and snow cover effects.

Data management. For a global observing system to be successful, all data from a site must be freely available to outside users. It is important that individual researchers who collect the data perform quality procedures before submission and follow standard accepted practices. Information resulting from this process should accompany the data sets along with relevant instructions as to the proper use of data sets. To assist in fulfilling these policy statements, the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) proposes to perform the data-management portion of the borehole temperature network as its contribution to GTN-P and as part of its national involvement in GCOS.

GSC will maintain the metadata information and receive the annual site data, in much the same way that the United States is performing the active layer component (CALM) and the Europeans are managing PACE. This GSC involvement recognizes Canada's important global role in permafrost research, its significant number of existing permafrost thermal observatories (more than 80 of the initial 250 sites identified), and its commitment to support the development and coordination of the international GTN-P programme. The proposed work also complements Canadian activities under way or proposed through Canada's Climate Change Action Fund - a three-year federal programme established in response to the Kyoto protocol - and extends these to the international level. In order to initiate these GTN-P activities and ensure continuity in the proposed five-year start-up phase, the GSC would perform the following activities:

• Develop a web site for the GTN-P. This site would be located on the permafrost home page of the GSC (http://sts.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/permafrost).

• Maintain metadata forms on permafrost thermal state observatories contributing to the network, and make this metadata accessible on the web site.

• Receive and store thermal data reported from the borehole observatories, and make summary data available on the web, with annual updates.

• Contribute to reporting, in collaboration with the PI and co-investigators, including a short paper on the establishment and goals of the network (for publication in the Russian Journal Earth Cryosphere in 1999).

• Produce an initial summary report on the GTN-P programme (to be released as a GSC Open File in the end of year 2000). The report will officially release metadata and available data. Included will be a summary report on permafrost thermal conditions and recent changes for western arctic North America.

• Publish the first five-year summary report in year 2004 with a draft presented at the Eighth International Conference on Permafrost (VIII ICOP) in Switzerland in 2003.

This summary report will be organised by regions with regional editors: North America (see Burn 1998 as an example) and South America, Europe, Eurasia, China, Antarctica, etc. Details of the reporting plans will be develop by the International Permafrost Association. Periodically data will be archived in the IPA Global Geocryological Data (GGD) at one of the regional WDC data centres. Currently this is done in WDC-A for Glaciology in Boulder, Colorado, and periodically produced on a CD-Rom. See Table for the proposed work schedule.

Links to other programmes. Our primary responsibilities are to maintain close working relations with the IPA and GCOS organisations, and the CALM and PACE programmes. We will coordinate closely with the GCOS/GTOS Terrestrial Observation Panel on Climate and its Chair Josef Cihlar, Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. Two of the TOPC members hold positions in the IPA: Roger Barry and Wilfried Haeberli. We will keep all IPA committees, working groups and task forces informed (see Frozen Ground Number 22 and the IPA web site); particularly the working groups on Global Change and the Southern Hemisphere. The co-chairs of the Global Change working group are authors of the IPCC report Chapter 16, Arctic and Antarctic. We will also provide input to the WCRP programme on climate and the cryosphere (CLIC) and related activities. Within the United States, we will continue to maintain close contact with NSF programmes (Arctic Transitions in the Land-Atmosphere System [ATLAS], RAISE, and the new NSF Environmental Observatories), federal agencies (USGS, CRREL) and university programmes. Within Canada, we will maintain close contact with CRYSYS (use of the Cryospheric System to Monitor Global Change in Canada), a programme led by Environment Canada, and coordination with the Canadian GCOS Cryosphere contributions. We have recently established contact with several members of the International Heat Flow Commission (IHFC) of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior (IASPEI) and the International Geological Correlation Project #428: Past Climate Change Inferred from the Analysis of the Underground Temperature Field. The following web sites contain more information on GTN-P programmes and linkages:

• IPA web: http://www.geodata.soton.ac.uk/ipa

• CALM web: http://www.geography.uc.edu/calm

• PACE web: http://www.cf.ac.uk/iwcc/earth/pace

• GSC web: http://sts.gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/permafrost/