Use the full frequency spectrum of a temperature signal to calculate the thermal diffusivity of soil

What is it about?

Large daily and annual surface temperature cycles diffuse into the ground with decreasing amplitude and increasing time lag, both direct functions of thermal diffusivity. Observations of these two dominant surface cycles have often been used in the past to estimate the thermal diffusivity of the ground. We show that weather patterns introduce a rich spectrum of additional frequency components into the surface temperature signal, and that these greatly enhance the interpretation of thermal diffusivity when assessed in the frequency domain.

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Why is it important?

Ground thermal diffusivity is a useful parameter for many purposes such geotechnical (e.g. laying gas pipes and electrical cables), agricultural (e.g. predicting germination times), geophysical (e.g. heat flow modelling) and weather forecasting (e.g. predicting frost).

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