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Variations in the top-layer soil freezing/thawing process from 2009 to 2018 in the Maqu area of the Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

Considerable progress has been made in understanding the variation rules of the freezing/thawing period and soil water-heat exchange. With the use of meteorological and soil observation data, this study highlighted the importance of vegetation cover and soil moisture for the beginning of the freezing/thawing period, and an improved calculation equation of the soil moisture content was presented, which could be used to simulate the variation in soil moisture during the freezing/thawing period. Our analyses showed that the temperature changes at the beginning of the soil freezing month (December) and the soil thawing month (February) were significantly different from 2009 to 2018. The rate of air temperature increase in December reached 0.38 °C/a. However, the air temperature in February changed little. As a result, the beginning of the soil freezing period was clearly lagged, while the beginning of the soil thawing period fluctuated little. The total soil thawing time increased by 25 days over 10 years. Furthermore, it was shown that the surface vegetation cover and soil moisture affected the beginning of the freezing/thawing time. In general, the soil freezing/thawing state at sites with low vegetation cover and soil moisture content was more likely to change. To further study the freezing/thawing mechanism, the relationship between the soil temperature and soil moisture during the freezing/thawing period was expressed as a fitting function of the relationship between soil water and heat. It was shown that the relationship between the soil moisture and soil temperature followed the new fitting function in both warm and cold years.

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Funding

This study is supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41530529, 91737103), the scientific research foundation of CUIT (Grant J201711), the Opening Fund of the Key Laboratory of Land Surface Process and Climate Change in Cold and Arid Regions, CAS (Grant LPCC2018006), and the Lanzhou City University Doctoral Research Initiation Fund (Grant LZCU-BS2019-13).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lanzhou City University, Lanzhou, China

    Dongyu Jia & Kaiming Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Process and Climate Change in Cold and Arid Regions, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

    Dongyu Jia, Xin Wang & Zuoliang Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education, School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Dongyu Jia & Min Liu

  4. College of Atmospheric Sciences, Plateau Atmosphere and Environment Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, China

    Jun Wen & Xin Lai

Authors
  1. Dongyu Jia
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  2. Min Liu
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  3. Kaiming Li
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  4. Xin Wang
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  5. Zuoliang Wang
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  6. Jun Wen
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  7. Xin Lai
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Correspondence to Jun Wen.

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Jia, D., Liu, M., Li, K. et al. Variations in the top-layer soil freezing/thawing process from 2009 to 2018 in the Maqu area of the Tibetan Plateau. Theor Appl Climatol 143, 21–32 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03382-2

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