Climate Change and Geopolitics: Monitoring of a Thawing Permafrost

“Frozen Land” – a glimpse of the Franz Josef Land archipelago. Photo: Ekaterina Uryupova

Permafrost thaw is one of the world’s most pressing climate problems, already disrupting lifestyles, livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems in the north, and threatening to spill beyond the boundaries of the Arctic as our planet continues to warm. To examine the effects of permafrost degradation, and increase our understanding of what this phenomenon means for the future of the region (and the world), The Arctic Institute’s new two-part permafrost series aims to analyze the topic from scientific, security, legal, and personal perspectives. The second installment of our series features eight new articles on permafrost degradation and its effects on Arctic life, research, and the world at large. But before, check out the seven articles from our first installment, starting with the Intro.

The Arctic Institute Permafrost Series 2021

• Agents and the Arctic: The Case for Increased Use of Agent-Based Modeling to Study Permafrost
• Drunken Forests: Teaching About Permafrost Thaw Through Personal Experience
• The Global Carbon Budget and Permafrost Feedback Loops in the Arctic
• Meltdown – The Permafrost that Holds the Arctic Together is Falling Apart
• Reducing Individual Costs of Permafrost Thaw Damage in Canada’s Arctic
• North but Maybe Not North Enough: Adapting Sub-Arctic Communities and Infrastructure to a Changing Climate
• Climate Change and Geopolitics: Monitoring of a Thawing Permafrost
• Infrastructure and Community Resilience in the Changing Arctic: Status, Challenges, and Research Needs
• Permafrost Thaw in the Warming Arctic: Final Remarks

The recent massive oil spill from storage tanks on Yamal Peninsula in Russia and landslides across the Arctic have become another ‘signal’ that climate change is happening now.¹⁾Schreiber M (2020) The massive Norilsk fuel spill could be linked to permafrost thaw, a growing threat to Arctic Infrastructure. Arctic Today, 8 June, https://www.arctictoday.com/the-massive-norilsk-fuel-spill-could-be-linked-to-permafrost-thaw-a-growing-threat-to-arctic-infrastructure/. Accessed on 18 August 2020.;Petley D (2019) Thawing permafrost is triggering thousands of landslides across the Arctic. The Conversation, 3 April, https://theconversation.com/thawing-permafrost-is-triggering-thousands-of-landslides-across-the-arctic-114702. Accessed on 05 August 2020. Increasing temperatures and rising sea levels are observable effects of the unpredictable and rapidly changing environment. One of the most poignant climate issues concerns the state of permafrost, a hidden layer of ice below the Earth’s surface. Its rapid degradation has enormous implications for climate change.²⁾IPCC (2019) IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.). Available from https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/. Accessed on 22 July 2020. Researchers from different countries have been studying permafrost for decades. However, the scientific community still has a long way to go to obtain an effective international monitoring system. How do consolidated efforts might help to resolve this issue? So far, sharing information through global data systems seems to be a sticking point.

Thawing Permafrost: Big Changes Start with Small Ones

The permafrost is a dynamic geological layer of Earth, a part of both land and ocean floor. It is found in the areas with negative temperatures in the northern hemisphere – Greenland, Russia, the U.S. state of Alaska, Canada, Europe, and China. Permafrost is very different in various locations, because it may consist of gravel, sand, and soil, and is usually bound together by ice. In the North, permafrost can be distributed continuously (Siberia) or it can be broken up into separate areas (Hudson Bay, Canada), thus the monitoring methods are expected to be appropriate.³⁾Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) (2020) Arctic Permafrost Zones. Available from https://gtnp.arcticportal.org/resources/maps/12-resources/39-other-maps. Accessed on 01 September 2020. 

One of the most disturbing unknowns on this topic: do we know enough about the dynamics of the permafrost parameters? Surprisingly, there is not yet an effective global permafrost monitoring system in existence!⁴⁾Streletsky D (2020) We need a permafrost monitoring system. The Arctic, 16 June 2020, https://arctic.ru/analitic/20200616/948752.html. Accessed on 17 August 2020. Again, there is no consensus on how scientists may use real-time raw data in their studies.

Impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Melting permafrost is not just about a disappearing layer of ice, but an unpredictable and complex future. The abrupt melting of permafrost is leading to erosion, landslides and craters in the Arctic landscape. As a result, unstable ground threatens to collapse houses and industrial constructions (potentially causing oil spills), as well as buckle roads and railways. In some communities, these fears have already been realized.

Ecological Response to Permafrost Thaw

As the Arctic warms, the permafrost is thawing, and greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, are being released to the atmosphere.⁵⁾Turetsky M R, Abbott B W, Jones M C, Anthony K W, Olefeldt D, Schuur E A G, Koven C, McGuire A D, Grosse G, Kuhry P, Hugelius G, Lawrence D M, Gibson C & Sannel A B K (2019) Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release. Nature 569: 32-34. Available from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4. Accessed on 12 September 2020.;Knoblauch C, Beer C, Liebner S, Grigoriev M N & Pfeiffer E-M (2018). Methane production as key to greenhouse gas budget of thawing permafrost. Nature Climate Change 8: 309-312. Available from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0095-z. Accessed on 28 August 2020. Permafrost plays an important role in supplying soil moisture and nutrients to floral elements. In fact, permafrost supports vegetation growth and production in the alpine grassland ecosystem; without this subsurface earth layer the ecosystem may become extinct. Widespread degradation of permafrost and the concomitant expansion of thermokarst-related landforms have the potential to significantly affect the composition, distribution and extent of plant communities in the Arctic and subarctic. Also, permafrost thaw changes habits and species composition which affects species richness. As ice and permafrost melt, it not only further accelerates climate change, but infectious agents (bacteria, viruses) may emerge as well.⁶⁾«How thawing permafrost could resurrect long-dormant diseases». Arctic Today, 16 June 2020, https://www.arctictoday.com/how-thawing-permafrost-could-resurrect-long-dormant-diseases/. Accessed on 05 September 2020. Furthermore, melting permafrost allows freshwater to be transported to the rivers and the Arctic Ocean, and it may cause significant changes in chemistry and biology of the Arctic Ocean.⁷⁾Meredith M (2019) Polar Regions. In: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.). Available from https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-3-2/. Accessed on 27 July 2020. It will definitely affect aquaculture, fishery, and the polar ecosystems.

Uncertain Ground: The Disruption to Life as We Know It

Degrading permafrost has an obvious effect on economic, societal and environmental aspects of human life throughout the world. But some communities will be more affected than others. For example, Indigenous peoples and coastal settlements face the brunt of the climate crisis. Loss of vegetation caused by melting permafrost is negatively impacting many traditional, Indigenous practices (for instance, reindeer herding) across the Arctic region. Permafrost melting is also making it more difficult for hunters to access traditional hunting grounds and is changing the migration patterns of certain species. These impacts threaten the survival of traditional knowledge and territorial existence, and may undermine indigenous ways of life that have persisted and adapted for a long time.⁸⁾Norton-Smith K, Lynn K, Chief K, Cozzetto K, Donatuto J, Hiza R M, Kruger L E, Maldonado J, Viles C, Whyte K P (2016) Climate change and indigenous peoples: a synthesis of current impacts and experiences. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-944. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 136 p. Available from https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr944.pdf. Accessed on 14 August 2020.

There are also concerns about whether these areas will remain livable. Landslides triggered by the melting of ground ice, embedded in the permafrost layer, can be dangerous for coastal communities. Scientists have already described a significant increase in numbers of slumps caused by warmer summers in a high Arctic environment over past few decades.⁹⁾Lewkowicz A G & Way R G (2019) Extremes of summer climate trigger thousands of thermokarst landslides in a High Arctic environment. Nature Communications 10: 1329, 02 April 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09314-7. Accessed on 28 August 2020.

Lackluster Efforts at Improved Global Data Collection

How do we observe today’s accelerating loss of permafrost? Not very. Some efforts have been made by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and International Permafrost Association (IPA), including Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM), Arctic Coastal Dynamics (ACD), Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP), and others. However, extrapolating site-level observations across the Arctic is likely to entail large uncertainties, due to the sparse boreholes in some locations, shallow observation depth at many sites, and inconsistency in the measurement methods and data gaps. At the end of the day, contributions to the global data are still sporadic, records are rarely updated, and very little information about the subsea permafrost is publicly available.

This is not a technical issue; there is no shortage of suitable methods, including borehole temperature measurements and satellite observations. The problem, instead, stems from two financial considerations. First, collecting data from these remote spaces is prohibitively expensive. Second, nobody wishes to store such a large amount of data. This also gives rise to questions of responsibility. But in the end, thus far, the idea of the continuous permafrost monitoring is blown out of the water, once officials consider the logistical barriers created by the region’s remoteness, large distances, and relatively small population.

National Approaches to Monitor a Changing Environment

In fact, there are national databases about the long-term dynamics of permafrost parameters in the United States, Russia, Switzerland (the Alps), Canada, and others. What do we actually need in the future? New approaches to combine diverse datasets with models through model initialization, parameterization and data assimilation for different databases. Also, when it comes to the access and use of the information, some datasets are available under certain conditions only. Surely, damage to infrastructure (pipelines, railways and other) can affect not only general economic activity, but also national security. Land access in the Arctic will diminish as permafrost thaws, and it will place the Arctic states and all their services under mounting pressure. For example, there are known instances of climate change having a direct impact on the military infrastructure in the Arctic.¹⁰⁾Karlovitch S, Perez-Uribe L, Lerner J & Collins L (2020) Global warming a costly, and dangerous, impact on key military bases in Alaska. The Seattle Times, 09 August 2020, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/impact-of-melting-permafrost-on-three-military-installations-in-alaska/. Accessed on 02 September 2020.;Hughes Z (2019) How climate change is affecting Alaska’s military radar stations. NPR, 25 February 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/02/25/697615977/how-climate-change-is-affecting-alaskas-military-radar-stations. Accessed on12 August 2020.

Changing permafrost conditions throughout the region pose immediate concerns for national defense, general economic activities, and homeland security within the Arctic countries. So why would they be so reluctant to share data with one another? Honestly, it appears that none of them wish to share data on future offshore oil and gas exploration sites, military installations and other structures.

Moving Forward

The Arctic nations that will be most heavily affected by climate change should develop plans and evaluate the various levels of risk, potential damage, and costs associated with further permafrost degradation. International cooperation is critical to the success of addressing climate change. Also, it is vital to establish closer interaction with the national weather observation services in every single Arctic state. But more importantly, an effective global permafrost monitoring system is needed. Addressing the impacts of Arctic thawing will require political will and more global scientific collaboration and strategic partnership!