The initial coupling between the two models was set up so that the thermal model would periodically provide thaw depth data to the hydro model, and the hydro model would provide soil moisture storage values to the thermal model. The thermal model ran on daily timesteps, whereas the hydro model ran on hourly timesteps. Results The region being modeled was the Kuparuk River basin extending from the north slope of Alaska's Brooks Range to the Arctic coast. The topography comes from digital elevation data for a 111 km x 237 km region with a resolution of 1000 meters. Topography of Kuparuk River basin on Alaska's North Slope.
Results are still quite preliminary.
However, coupling has been achieved, and test runs have been made with the models running in coupled mode and uncoupled mode. Figure 8 shows values obtained from the hydro model running independently, receiving no data from the thermal model. In Figure 9, the values are a result of the hydro model using predicted thaw depths sent to it by the thermal model. Recall that the original, uncoupled hydro model used thaw depths that were based on empirical data, and these values were held constant through the whole region at each timestep. The results of these preliminary uncoupled and coupled simulations suggest that coupling the hydrologic and thermal models will indeed produce substantially different results.