The electrical Resistivity of the subsurface depends, amongst others, on the presence of liquid water and soil temperature. For the delineation of thermal variations of the subsurface it is clearly necessary to further optimize the commonly used data processing methods- a significant innovation of ATMOperm. The measurement of the thawing layer using the geoelectrical method is complemented by measurements of the energy fluxes between the atmosphere and soil. This allows investigating the effects of energy exchange between the atmosphere and the ground on the thickness and the thermal variations within the thawing layer in an ideal way. The ATMOperm monitoring will be developed for the Hoher Sonnblick (Austrian Central Alps). Considering that at Hoher Sonnblick an extensive permafrost monitoring already exists and that the atmospheric monitoring network is highly developed there. Furthermore, we propose to use monitoring data from ongoing projects at Schilthorn (Bernese Alps, Switzerland) and Kitzsteinhorn (Austrian Central Alps). ATMOperm will improve the knowledge about the causes of changes in alpine permafrost in the light of global climate change and will establish the applied methods as a pioneering environmental monitoring.

Project partners: ZAMG, KF-UNI Graz, TU Wien (Geophysik), KIGAM, USG/alpS, Université de Fribourg (UFG)