Distribution of the late Quaternary paleo-permafrost.

Distribution of paleo-permafrost for the three eras in the late Quaternary (for the pre-industrial [0ka], the Holocene Optimum [6ka], and the Last Glacial Maximum [21ka]) was reproduced from the Paleoclimate Model Intercomparison phase II (PMIP2) meteorological data, by use of statistical and physical models. The statistical model was constructed by the present-day freezing and thawing indexes, and the corresponding frozen ground type (Saito et al. 2009). The physical models are a) the Geophysical Institute Permafrost Lab (GIPL) permafrost dynamics model, and b) the MATSIRO land surface scheme in a Japanese GCM (MIROC) refined for the permafrost dynamics (Saito 2008).
The work was partially supported by NSF Grant number ARC-0327664, 0652838. The MIROC GCM was developed by AORI (Univ. Tokyo), NIES and RIGC (JAMSTEC), Japan. Simulations were partly done at the Arctic Research Supercomputing Center (ARSC).