Thermo-hydrological river valley observatory in Yedoma permafrost from 2012 through 2022 in Syrdakh, Central Yakutia

Abstract

Permafrost thaw affects the global carbon cycle and can significantly alter landscape morphology and associated processes of mass and energy transfer. An understudied aspect of thaw-affected permafrost landscapes is ubiquitous rivers connecting thermokarst lakes. These features of Arctic landscapes exhibit particularly high variability in water and energy transfer because, in lakes with larger water storage, excess water leads to comparatively small changes in water level and discharge, whereas in streams the channeled flow produces much larger fluctuations. Consequently, an equivalent absolute change in water level represents a much smaller relative change in lakes than in streams, resulting in a comparatively minor impact on overall heat content and energy transport. Such rivers thus provide an excellent field laboratory for analyzing how expected changes in meteorological forcing under climate change affect permafrost dynamics and carbon exchange within the land- and limnoscape. This paper presents a database from 2012 through 2022 for one such small stream connecting two thermokarst lakes. We instrumented two main stream cross sections with multiple subsurface thermistor chains to record temperature evolution from the land or water-land interface (≥ 5 cm depth) to soil depths of up to 5 m. The cross sections covered different topography and vegetation cover. One was located near the upper, and one in between the two thermokarst lakes. The main focus was set on the cross section midway between the two lakes (CS 9) due to the absence of a thermal imprint from the lake. Air, water, and ground temperatures, as well as physio-chemical river water and soil properties of the surrounding environment were measured continuously or during annual field campaigns and are provided as time-series or single tests. The data are organized in three main categories: atmosphere, water and ground, and are complemented by a GIS database including a digital surface model and an ortho-mosaic photo of the entire river valley to facilitate the search for measurements of interest. The database comes with a complete set of scripts to process any of the data, which are provided in CSV or other easily accessible standard file formats. Ultimately, the data can be used to develop models and validate numerical codes for improving the representation of permafrost processes in land surface and climate models where climate change induces significant changes in heat and mass transfer. All data and processing scripts are available through an online repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14619854,).