Аннотация:Active layer is a very sensitive natural object to climate change. The response
of permafrost to air temperature increasing followed by active layer thickening,
is usually characterized by the correlation of active layer thickness (ALT) and the
sum of positive daily temperatures of warm season (DDT). Besides climate,
geological and landscape characteristics affect ALT values. We have estimated
the significance of DDT effect on seasonal thawing and examined the spatial
variability of correlations between them.
For the analysis, Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring program’s ALT data
from George Washington University website (http://www.gwu.edu/~calm/) were
used. 21 sites on the territory of Russian cryolithozone with 9 years and more
observation series were taken. Daily air temperatures were taken from
neighbouring weather stations (http://www.meteo.ru/data and
http://www.rp5.ru).
The statistical coefficient R2 — the coefficient of determination (the fraction
of the variance explained by the statistical model) as an indicator characterizing
the relation between ALT and DDT was adopted. Data processing and analysis
performed in the Statistica software.