CryoGrid

The CryoGrid Model Suite provides a range of numerical tools for simulating the ground thermal regime and the ice–water balance for permafrost and glaciers. The modeling toolbox is developed in an international collaboration between the University of Oslo, the Technical University of Denmark, the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, and the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung.

The CryoGrid model Suite includes the well-established CryoGrid 1, 2, 3 permafrost models and the CryoGrid Community model. For special high-performance applications requiring optimized computational efficiency, the CryoGridLite and CryoGrid.jl models are available. Depending on the application needs, which can range from very detailed thermal-hydrological point simulations to simulations over the entire Arctic, different model tools are offered, characterized by different complexity and modularity. In this way, the CryoGrid Model Suite covers a wide range of application scenarios in climate and ecosystem research and cold region engineering in the Arctic.

The model suite is applied by a growing user community to answer research questions such as:

• Terrestrial permafrost evolution under climate warming scenarios
• Submarine permafrost change including influence of heat and salt dynamics
• Effects of permafrost thaw on the carbon cycle
• Interactions between vegetation and permafrost, i.e. also dynamics and evolution of boreal forests
• Vulnerability of infrastructures to permafrost thaw
• Studies on thermohydrological processes in different Arctic ecosystems, including lake formation
• Exploring geothermal heating potentials

Technical Model Descriptions:
Westermann, S., Langer, M., Boike, J., Heikenfeld, M., Peter, M., Etzelmüller, B., and Krinner, G.: Simulating the thermal regime and thaw processes of ice-rich permafrost ground with the land-surface model CryoGrid 3, Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 523–546, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-523-2016, 2016.

Westermann, S., Ingeman-Nielsen, T., Scheer, J., Aalstad, K., Aga, J., Chaudhary, N., Etzelmüller, B., Filhol, S., Kääb, A., Renette, C., Schmidt, L. S., Schuler, T. V., Zweigel, R. B., Martin, L., Morard, S., Ben-Asher, M., Angelopoulos, M., Boike, J., Groenke, B., Miesner, F., Nitzbon, J., Overduin, P., Stuenzi, S. M., and Langer, M.: The CryoGrid community model (version 1.0) – a multi-physics toolbox for climate-driven simulations in the terrestrial cryosphere, Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 2607–2647, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-2607-2023, 2023.

Langer, M., Nitzbon, J., Groenke, B., Assmann, L.-M., Schneider von Deimling, T., Stuenzi, S. M., and Westermann, S.: The evolution of Arctic permafrost over the last three centuries, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-473, 2022.