Impacts of seasonally frozen soil hydrothermal dynamics on the watershed hydrological processes inferred from a spatially distributed numerical modelling approach.

[Display omitted] • A fully distributed frozen soil hydrothermal processes model was developed. • The hydrological impacts of surface soil freeze-thaw cycle were quantified. • Soil ice meltwater contributing to watershed reached about 35% in thawing period. The freeze–thaw cycle over the surface seasonally frozen soil is an important soil hydrothermal dynamic process linking land surface processes and climatic changes in the cold regions. With the advancement of frozen soil hydrothermal dynamic studies and remote sensing technology, the simulation of frozen soil hydrological processes based on the distributed numerical model has become a hotspot to better understand the impact of frozen soil hydrothermal dynamics on the watershed hydrological processes in the cold regions over a large spatial scale. However, the quantitative analysis of the impact of seasonally frozen soil hydrothermal processes on watershed runoff at long-term time scales remained an unsolved issue in the field of frozen soil hydrology. Under the framework of the watershed distributed eco-hydrological model ESSI-3, a fully distributed frozen soil hydro-thermal processes integrated modeling system (FFIMS model) was established based on the coupled water and heat transferring mechanism for frozen soil hydro-thermal process simulations in the frozen surface or at a certain depth of a watershed. By coupling the FFIMS model with the distributed eco-hydrological model ESSI-3, the impacts of seasonally frozen soil hydrothermal processes on hydrological processes were investigated from the perspective of temporal-spatial domain with the simulated hydrothermal and hydrological processes for a long-term period from 2008 to 2016 over a watershed located in the cold region of Northeastern China. The results suggested that the soil freeze–thaw cycling posed different impacts with limited significance throughout the whole hydrological processes of the watershed in different seasons. Significant impacts on the hydrological processes were particularly observed in the thawing period of a year, when soil ice meltwater contributing to the discharge of the study watershed reached to about 35% in average in this period. ESSI-3 coupled with the FFIMS modelling system obviously improved the performance of the original ESSI-3 in cold region watershed simulations, and the averaged Nash efficiency coefficients obtained increased from almost 0 to 0.77 in the thawing period of a year. The study demonstrated the importance of application of spatially distributed numerical model with physical mechanism for seasonally frozen soil water and heat transfer process simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]