Premium
Perturbation of ground surface temperature reconstructions by groundwater flow?
Author(s) -
Ferguson Grant,
Beltrami Hugo,
Woodbury Allan D.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2006gl026634
Subject(s) - advection , groundwater , perturbation (astronomy) , groundwater flow , environmental science , thermal conduction , heat flow , flow (mathematics) , geology , meteorology , hydrology (agriculture) , climatology , mechanics , thermal , thermodynamics , physics , geotechnical engineering , aquifer , quantum mechanics
Subsurface temperatures have been shown to be a robust source of information on past climates. Most analyses neglect groundwater flow (GWF) and assume purely conductive heat flow. However, in many situations GWF has not been fully considered and to date there are no general GWF criteria for either accepting or rejecting a temperature profile for paleoclimate analysis. Here we examine the transition from conduction dominated environments to environments where advection has a significant effect on the subsurface temperature regime and thus ground surface temperature (GST) histories. We provide guidelines indicating when advection is important and conclude that it is unlikely that groundwater flow is a significant source of error in the global data set maintained by the International Heat Flow Commission.