Abstract
In recent decades, research of the Alps, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and Cordillera have made great progress in understanding the phenomenon of permafrost. For the most part, this has been made possible due to temperature monitoring. However, the permafrost parameters in an area of more than 2 million square km of the mountainous regions of northeast Asia, for the most part, remain a blank spot in the scientific community. Due to the lack and insufficiency of factual materials, in 2012 the P.I. Melnikov Permafrost Institute began to take temperature measurements in the upper part of the permafrost in the central part of the Verkhoyan-Kolyma uplands, namely the Suntar-Khayat ridge. The article describes the temperature characteristics of air, surface and rocks of the active layer in the range of heights from 850 to 1821 m, in various landscape and topographic elements. For the observation period from 2012 to 2019, we obtained information on temperatures in the soils of the active layer at depths of 1 m, 3 m, 4 m, and 5 m and also air and surface temperature parameters. The availability of data on automated monitoring of rock temperatures in the active layer and the upper horizons of the layer of annual heat rotations made it possible to substantiate the most typical conditions of the temperature conditions of the permafrost zone of the characterized region. The parameters of permafrost existence and development are in favorable conditions. This is shown in the analysis of temperature data of air, surface and active layer. Soil temperatures in the active layer of annual heat rotations are most clearly represented at a depth of 1 m. Currently, on the territory of the mountain regions of Eastern Siberia, there are no more such sites for monitoring the temperature regime of soils. Information on the permafrost parameters in the region will allow us to begin the process of creating new models or checking existing forecasts and the distribution of the temperature pattern. It will also make it possible to evaluate the response of sensitive and vulnerable frozen soils of mountain regions to climate change.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the friendly personnel at Northern-Eastern Federal University. In particular, Maksim Tretyakov and Stepan Ro** for their help with field work and transport accessing. A special thank goes out to Artem Egorov for the thermistor tools and field equipment and Muse Tarekegn for help with translation and editing. This work was supported by the Russian Science Fund under basic project No. IX.135.2 “Geotemperature field and transformation of the permafrost zone of North Asia and mountainous regions of Central Asia”.
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Sysolyatin, R., Serikov, S., Zheleznyak, M. et al. Temperature monitoring from 2012 to 2019 in central part of Suntar-Khayat Ridge, Russia. J. Mt. Sci. 17, 2321–2338 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-020-6175-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-020-6175-3