Past and present permafrost distribution in the Southern Hemisphere: comparison of the GCM-based mapping with the observations

SAITO KAZUYUKI; TROMBOTTO, DARIO

Longyearbyen

Congreso; Third European Conference on Permafrost; 2010

Abstract In Saito et al. (2009) the abovementioned mapping result was provided only for the Northern Hemisphere, but the methodology is easily extended to application to the Southern Hemisphere to produce the large-scale distribution map of frozen ground in the austral continents. Firstly, observed freeze index in Patagonia is used for validation of the simulated thermal index distribution. Further, the resulting frozen ground maps are presented and compared with the observation-derived evidences for current and glacial climate.