Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost

GTN‐P was developed in the 1990s by the International Permafrost Association (IPA) under the Global Climate observing System (GCOS) and the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS),[1] with the long-term goal of obtaining a comprehensive view of the spatial structure, trends and variability of changes in the active layer thickness and permafrost temperature.

The TSP observatories in the United States and Russia have been supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and managed by the Geophysical Institute Permafrost Laboratory[6] at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Members of the GTN-P governing board represent a wide palette of specialties involved in permafrost observation as well as specialists of data management.

It is managed in close cooperation with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, which was also the coordinator of the now-closed PAGE21 project[10] within EU 7th framework programme, the main sponsor for the establishment of this database.

The GTN-P database additionally contains air and surface temperature and moisture (DUE Permafrost, MODIS) measured in the terrestrial Panarctic, Antarctic and Mountainous realms.