Correcting heat flow data in the United States to account for climate change

<p> Heat flow measurements may require correction for both recent warming and post-glacial warming signals. Warming during the last century can be detected in borehole temperature profiles. Both climate warming signals during the past century and post-glacial warming signals during the past 10 millennia are greatest near the surface and diminish with depth. </p><p> Both atmospheric data and borehole temperature data show that recent warming varies systematically with latitude along a north-south transect in the United States. The systematic increase with latitude from +0.7 oC at 41.6oN to +2.3 oC at 49oN during the last century is consistent with the prediction that global warming due to increasing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere varies with latitude. </p><p> A systematic increase of heat flow with depth is predicted to result from the post glacial warming signal in the upper 2km. A modeled depth dependent correction of post glacial warming indicated that the thermal gradient may be underestimated by 27% in some areas, thereby implying that some heat flow values in the United States may be up to 27% higher depending on the depth of the temperature gradient measurement. Averaging the corrected heat flow values shows that the average heat flow is 58 mW m-2, 78 mW m-2 and 51 mW m-2 for the whole conterminous United States, Western and Eastern United States respectively. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geology

Year

2013

Author dc:creator

• Njoku, Godswill

Contributors dc:contributor

• W.D. Gosnold Jr.

• Terrestrial heat flow--Measurement; Global warming
• Geology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.und.edu/theses/211

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.und.edu:theses-1210