Divergent responses of permafrost degradation to precipitation increases at different seasons on the eastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau based on modeling approach

Abstract

Abstract The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) has responded to remarkable climate warming with dramatic permafrost degradation over the past few decades. Previous studies have mostly focused on permafrost responses to rising air temperature, while the effects of accompanying increases in precipitation remain contentious and largely unknown. In this study, a distributed process-based model was applied to quantify the impacts of increased precipitation on permafrost thermal regimes in a warming climate by employing model experiments in the source region of Yellow River (SRYR) on the eastern QTP. The results showed that the active layer thickness (ALT) of permafrost increased by 0.25 m during 2010–2019 compared to 2000 across the SRYR, which was primarily driven by climate warming. In contrast, the increased annual precipitation played a relatively limited role and just slightly mitigated active layer thickening by 0.03 m. Intriguingly, increased precipitation in the cold and warm seasons exerted opposite effects on permafrost across the SRYR. The increased precipitation in the cold season mainly promoted ALT increases, while the increased precipitation in the warm season mitigated ALT increases. In ∼81.0% of the permafrost across the SRYR, the cooling effects of warm season wetting outweighed the warming effects of cold season wetting; while at the transition zone where permafrost was unstable and degrading to seasonally frozen ground, the warming effects of cold season wetting played a relatively larger role which contributed to permafrost degradation. This study explored the physical mechanisms of permafrost thermal responses to climate wetting, thus providing a better understanding of permafrost change in a warmer and wetter climate on the QTP.