Heat flow variations with depth in Europe can be explained by a model of surface temperature changes [10°C. New heat flow map of Europe is based on updated database of uncorrected heat flow values to which paleoclimatic correction is applied across the continent. Correction is depth dependent due to a diffusive thermal transfer of the surface temperature forcing of which glacial-interglacial history has the largest impact. It is obvious that large part of the uncorrected heat flow values in the existing heat flow databases from wells as shallow as few hundreds of meters is underestimated. This explains some very low uncorrected heat flow values 20-30 mW/m 2 in the shields and shallow basin areas of the craton. Also, heat flow values in other areas including orogenic belts are likely underestimated. Based on the uncorrected and corrected heat flow maps using 5 km 9 5 km grid, we have calculated average heat flow values (uncorrected heat flow: 56.0 mW/m 2 ; SD 20.3 mW/m 2 vs. corrected heat flow: 63.2 mW/m 2 ; SD 19.6 m/Wm 2 ) and heat loss for the continental part. Total heat loss is 928 E09 W for the uncorrected values versus corrected 1050 E09 W.
Twentieth century (1900 to 1990) changes in annual surface air temperature (SAT) are compared with contemporaneous changes in annual ground surface temperature (GST) over an area extending from east of the Cordillera in north-western Canada, to Texas in the south-central United States. One of the largest SAT increases over the past century has occurred in the north-western portion of this study area. It also coincides (spatial regression coefficient r = 0.70) with the largest positive GST anomaly in northern North America. However, there are large areas of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and southern Northwest Territories that exhibit spatially coherent patterns of differences between SAT and GST warming. These differences appear to be related to twentieth century land-use and land-cover changes. The highest GST warming has been observed in large areas where extensive land-cover changes, such as the clearing of forests, increased forest fire activity, and conversion of prairie grassland to agricultural land, have occurred. It is hypothesized that land-cover change dramatically alters surface characteristics affecting the radiation budget and energy balance. The partitioning between sensible and latent fluxes is altered and the potential for land drying is increased. Calculated flux changes associated with land-cover change are comparable in magnitude with greenhouse gas radiative forcing. It therefore appears that through a step change in GST, land-cover changes have contributed to a portion of the observed SAT warming in this region.KEY WORDS: Surface air temperature · Ground surface temperature · Ground temperature logs · North-western North America climate anomaly · Twentieth century land-use and land-cover changes
While previously examined only for Alberta (Majorowicz and Moore, 2008), the potential for the Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) concept, as outlined by the MIT report (Tester et al., 2006), is examined here for all of Canada. Enhanced (or Engineered) Geothermal Systems are engineered reservoirs that have been created to extract economical amounts of heat from low permeability and/or porosity geothermal resources. Temperatures greater than 150 °C at depths less than 7km are required. To evaluate target areas for potential EGS heat mining across Canada we have constructed detailed heat flow and depth-temperature maps to determine the geothermal resource base in conduction dominated systems (sedimentary basins and crystalline basment). We also determined the quantity of thermal energy (heat content available from deep hot rocks). We evaluate thermal energy availability for 3 depth slices (3-4 km; 6-7 km and 9.5-10.5 km) in a 4 km by 4 km grid.
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