Simulating water and heat transport with freezing and cryosuction in unsaturated soil: Comparing an empirical, semi-empirical and physically-based approach

•A simple water and heat transport model is used to compare three different approaches to simulate unsaturated soil freezing: empirical, semi-empirical and physically-based.•All three approaches work well to simulate the observed freezing process in three different experimental datasets.•Comparing the performance and parameterization of each approach reveals that the semi-empirical version is easiest to implement without soil type specific calibration.