This is a 2D landscape cross-section, not a rotated view of a single soil column: the canvas plots horizontal position along a transect (x-axis) against depth (y-axis). At every horizontal position an independent Stefan-equation soil column is integrated — same physics as a single-column model, run in parallel across the field:
X = sqrt( 2 k |I| / (L ρw θw) )
I = ∫ T_surface dt (surface degree-seconds
since the phase reversed)
where k is soil thermal conductivity, L = 334,000 J/kg is the latent heat of fusion, ρw = 1000 kg/m³, and θw is volumetric water content. What makes each column differ is its local snow depth: real snow doesn't sit at a uniform thickness — wind redistributes it, scouring exposed ground and piling deep drifts in the lee of any obstacle. This transect models a fixed drift pattern (a scoured patch, then a deep lee-side drift) riding on top of the same baseline snowfall:
snow(x) = base · (1 − scour(x) + drift(x))
T_surface = T_air · n_f(snow(x)), n_f = 1 / (1 + 0.045 · snow_cm)
Thicker local snow damps the winter n-factor further, so the freeze front in a drift pocket can fail to reach as deep as the summer thaw did in that same spot — leaving a talik trapped there — even while a nearby scoured patch, with the very same air temperature and soil moisture, freezes solid to the same depth summer reached. Real Arctic monitoring networks (e.g. the Alaska Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring program) report exactly this kind of patchy, drift-controlled talik distribution, which a single soil column can never show.
- Mean annual air temperature — shared by every column; sets overall thaw/freeze strength around a fixed ±16 °C seasonal swing.
- Baseline snow depth — the flat-ground snowfall the drift pattern is layered on top of.
- Snowdrift strength — how much the fixed scour/drift shape perturbs that baseline; 0% makes every column identical (the transect degenerates to a single uniform column), higher values carve out sharper local extremes.
- Soil water content — shared by every column; wetter soil moves both fronts more slowly everywhere.