PERMAFROST MELT IMPERILS INFRASTRUCTURE, HOMES
28 December 2005

A new study by American researchers, published today in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests the top layers of arctic permafrost could be melted by the end of this century. Researchers believe the melt would release large amounts of contained carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to an accelerating cycle of warming and interrupting deep ocean currents that help regulate the planet's climate.

In Russia's northern regions, permafrost melt is causing buildings to slip slowly and crack. Alaska has seen infrastructure such as roads, highways, and pipelines damaged or undermined by increasing melt. Fairbanks is considered highly vulnerable to shifting temperatures, the arctic "freezing line" and even slippage of muddy tundra topsoil, and may, as a result, have serious problems and rising costs associated with ice melt.

Russia's city of Vorkuta (once a Stalinist gulag town, but still dependent on a certain amount of permafrost in the ground) is one of the places highlighted by a new report by the Discovery Times channel, though its mayor refuses to acknowledge climate change.

According to the Toronto Star, much of the Canadian tundra will be subject to augmented "active layer" permafrost melt, several meters deep, during at least part of every year. Currently, the active layer in arctic regions of Canada tends to vary between 30 centimeters and 1 meter at most, where there is regular melting. But by 2150, the active layer could reach 3.5 meters deep or more across the region. This will have a powerful adverse effect on infrastructure that requires solid, stable ground.

There are fears that a pipeline project, which will cost an estimated $7 billion dollars, will face dangerous and repeated landslides due to the effects of melt, as would other fundamental existing infrastructure. Roads could be undermined by shifting soils, and the region could face ongoing emergency situations where populations find themselves stranded or without a means of importing needed food and other necessities.

Studies show that extensive thaw of tundra permafrost could release huge amounts of trapped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and play havoc with Arctic Ocean currents, possibly altering the flow of deep ocean currents that regulate climate at all latitudes.

By 2100, researchers estimate that only islands in the Arctic archipelago and Greenland itself (mostly glacier at present) will retain solid surface permafrost in warm months. The new study shows that only about one tenth of existing permafrost will retain its year-round freeze at surface levels if the planet warms 1º to 2ºC on average.

The American researchers who conducted the study also worry that melting ground ice could substantially increase runoff to the Arctic Ocean, by as much as 28%, and that such increased runoff could affect the climate-stabilizing warm currents of the north Atlantic.

Ellesmere Island is said to have experienced "massive landslides" due to melting permafrost, and that such conditions could easily spread across a region Canada is still working to develop. Even if it is possible to plot and build an infrastructure adaptable to the annual "heave" of active permafrost, costs could escalate to a level not currently planned for.

The study also finds that even halving global carbon emissions by 2100 would only bring the 10% unscathed permafrost levels to an upper estimate of 40% of global permafrost terrain not subject to summer melting. [s]