Subsurface thermal effects of land use changes

Abstract

The International Heat Flow Commission global geothermal data set contains over 10,000 borehole temperature logs worldwide. Only about 10% of these data are currently used for climate studies because a number of known nonclimatic energy perturbations are superimposed on the climatic signal. Here we propose a first‐order approach in terms of ground surface temperatures (GSTs) to attempt to correct borehole temperature data for the effects of one of these nonclimatic energy perturbations: deforestation. We simulate the ground surface temperature changes following deforestation using a combined power‐exponential function describing the organic matter decay and recovery of the forest floor after a clear‐cut. Application of this correction could allow many borehole data to be incorporated into the borehole climatology database and, at the same time, may allow land surface models to use geothermal data in regions of known land disruption in order to optimize land surface energy exchange parameterizations.