Climate change has already made significant alterations to various elements of the hydrologic cycle. One relatively less attended hydrologic impact of climate change is on the landscape Freeze-Thaw (FT), which largely affects surface and sub-surface hydrology, phenology, and land-atmospheric interactions, particularly in cold regions. Understanding the impacts of climate change on FT patterns, however, is not trivial due to sparse networks of in-situ measurements as well as limitations in current physically-based modeling schemes, aiming at continuous simulations of FT states. Here, we propose shifting the focus of FT modeling from continuous simulations in time and space, and move toward statistical representations of FT characteristics at larger temporal and spatial scales. We accordingly suggest using copulas to formally describe the impacts of temperature alterations on FT characteristics using conditional probabilities. To showcase the application of this framework in practice, we pair datasets of satellite-based FT with gridded temperature over Quebec, Canada. The results show strong and rather unique dependencies between temperature and FT characteristics across different regions and/ or timeframes. Our findings demonstrate copulas as effective tools to capture such dependencies and to reconstruct marginal FT characteristics. Through a set of impact assessments, it is shown that a similar change in temperature conditions can result in different regional responses in landscape FT. These responses are often nonsymmetric, meaning that the magnitude of change in FT conditions can be different under warming and cooling conditions. In addition, we highlight intensifications in FT responses to a similar magnitude of change in temperature under more recent years, which is linked to alterations in dependencies between temperature and FT. This study provides another line of evidence for complex responses of landscape FT to climate change.

In order to assess the impact of seasonal active layer thaw and thermokarst on river flow and turbidity, a gauging station was installed near the mouth of the Sheldrake River in the discontinuous permafrost zone of northern Quebec. The station provided 5 years of water level data and 3 years of turbidity data. The hydrological data for the river showed the usual high water stage occurring at spring snowmelt, with smaller peaks related to rain events in summer. Larger and longer turbidity peaks also occurred in summer in response to warm air temperature spells, suggesting that a large part of the annual suspension load was carried during midsummer turbidity peaks. Supported by geomorphological observations across the catchment area, the most plausible interpretation is that the rapid thawing of the active layer during warm conditions in July led to the activation of frostboils and triggered landslides throughout the river catchment, thus increasing soil erosion and raising sediment delivery into the hydrological network. These results indicate that maximum sediment discharge in a thermokarst-affected region may be predominantly driven by the rate of summer thawing and associated activation of erosion features in the catchment.

Wildfire is an important factor on carbon sequestration in the North American boreal biomes. Being globally important stocks of organic carbon, peatlands may be less sensitive to burning in comparison with upland forests, especially wet unforested ombrotrophic ecosystems as found in northeastern Canada. We aimed to determine if peatland fires have driven carbon accumulation patterns during the Holocene. To cover spatial variability, six cores from three peatlands in the Eastmain region of Quebec were analyzed for stratigraphic charcoal accumulation. Results show that regional Holocene peatland fire frequency was similar to 2.4 fires 1000 yr(-1), showing a gradually declining trend since 4000 cal yr BP, although inter- and intra-peatland variability was very high. Charcoal peak magnitudes, however, were significantly higher between 1400 and 400 cal yr BP, possibly reflecting higher charcoal production driven by differential climatic forcing aspects. Carbon accumulation rates generally declined towards the late-Holocene with minimum values of similar to 10 g m(-2) r(-1) around 1500 cal yr BP. The absence of a clear correlation between peatland fire regimes and carbon accumulation indicates that fire regimes have not been a driving factor on carbon sequestration at the millennial time scale. (C) 2012 University of Washington. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Not all places may in fact warm under global change scenarios. This paper presents an example of climatic cooling from northern Quebec, Canada. Ground temperature measurements along the southern shore of Hudson Strait, northern Quebec indicate a cooling trend over the last seven years (1987-93). Long-term air temperature records show that this area has actually experienced continuous cooling for more than 40 years. Related studies suggest that the cooling is likely to continue due to freshening of subpolar water in the North Atlantic and Labrador Sea area. A one-dimensional geothermal model was used to simulate the effect of continued cooling on permafrost thermal regime in Salluit, northern Quebec. The results show that, if the climatic trend continues for the next 50 years, the thickness of the active layer would decrease by 30 cm (from 2.3 to 2.0 m) in gneiss and by 20 cm (from 1.3 to 1.1 m) in till. Permafrost temperature at 20 m depth would decrease by 0.65 degrees C. Under the cooling scenario, rate of permafrost creep and slope activities would be reduced. Ice-wedge regrowth would continue, and the buried ice wedges may even become reactivated. The results also indicate that regional snow precipitation data cannot be used directly in predicting ground thermal regimes.