Permafrost Thaw in a Warming World: The Arctic Institute’s Permafrost Series Fall-Winter 2020
Permafrost degradation is a major threat to Arctic communities and ecosystems, but it also extends beyond the region, as it contributes to climate change and the positive feedback loop which threatens to push our planet into an environmental crisis. The Arctic Institute’s new series examines permafrost degradation and its implications from an interdisciplinary perspective. Photo: United States National Parks Service Climate Change Response
Permafrost thaw is one of the gravest yet lesser discussed impacts of climate change. Permafrost covers 24 percent of the surface of land masses in the northern hemisphere and accounts for nearly half of all organic carbon stored within the planet’s soil. As long as this organic matter remains frozen, it will stay trapped in the permafrost. However, if it thaws, microbes will begin to eat the material, causing it to decay and releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Even if a small fraction of these greenhouse gases are released, it will have major consequences on not only the Arctic, but Earth’s entire climate system, as they intensify global climate change.
Permafrost temperatures are rising at a much faster rate than the temperature of the air in the Arctic, and have risen between 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius in the last 30 years. As a result, permafrost layers are melting. A 3 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures could melt 30 to 85 percent of the top permafrost layers that exist across the Arctic region, destroying infrastructure and irreversibly changing the unique terrain and ecosystems at the top of the world.
As permafrost degradation buckles roads, compromises homes, and changes the landscape of a homeland to four million people, it is without a doubt one of the most serious threats to people both within and beyond the Arctic in this century. The Arctic Institute’s new two-part series examines permafrost thaw from different perspectives in an effort to understand and contextualize this complex phenomenon. The first part will be published this September, October, and November 2020, while the second part will follow in winter 2021. The papers in this series include personal encounters with permafrost thaw, scientific analyses of the issue, reflections on how permafrost thaw affects North American security and economics, and artistic initiatives aimed at education. The Institute also aims to host several webinars with guest experts who will further discuss and analyze the implications of permafrost degradation and how it affects not only the Arctic, but the rest of the world. We look forward to sharing this work with you.
The Impact of Permafrost Thaw
In recent years, permafrost thaw has become a salient and pervasive threat that touches life in all corners of the Arctic, and impacts the wellbeing of Arctic residents, ecosystems, economies, and planetary health in four key ways: erosion, destabilizing landscapes and buildings, flooding hazards and forced migration, and diseases. Furthermore, contending with permafrost thaw is especially difficult, as it is influenced by global processes of warming and this is hard to change and control in a short period of time. Combating permafrost thaw will take a concerted effort from people and states across the world, as this problem clearly extends beyond the boundaries of the Arctic.
The Arctic is warming more than two times faster than the global average. Permafrost thaw contributes to a positive feedback loop that further accelerates the warming of Earth, releasing methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon, directly into the atmosphere, and contributing to the spread of devastating Arctic wildfires. Though its lifespan in the atmosphere is much shorter than carbon dioxide, methane’s impact on climate change has been found to be 25 times greater over a 100-year period. While the Arctic was previously considered a carbon sink, new research shows that the region is emitting more carbon than it is absorbing, largely due to permafrost thaw. It is estimated that the world’s permafrost contains up to 1,700 billion tonnes of carbon, which is almost double the amount of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere, and four times more than what has already been emitted by humans as since the Industrial Revolution. If all permafrost were degraded to the point of decomposing, the disastrous effects would be felt all over the world.
We are already seeing the direct effects of permafrost thaw. In the world’s most remote corners, shorelines are receding at alarming rates. Permafrost thaw works in tandem with reduced Arctic sea ice. Normally, the ice acts as a wave-break along the Arctic coastline, protecting the land from storms. But with longer ice-free periods and coastal earth that is already softer than normal due to the melt, a single storm can erode up to 20 meters of shoreline. Arctic coastlines have seen an average erosion rate of nearly half a meter per year over the last fifty years. Experts estimate that some Arctic islands, particularly in northern Russia, may soon be washed into the sea. In Alaska and the Canadian north, dozens of people have been displaced as the ocean edges ever closer to their towns and homes, often leaving houses teetering on the edge of the North American continent.
Permafrost thaw also destabilizes the ground above it, damaging critical infrastructure, causing unprecedented flooding, and displacing entire communities. Soil that was once frozen year-round is now thawing and refreezing each year. When the ground thaws, the soil contracts and sinks, and when it freezes again it expands and rises. This continuous cycle shifts, displaces, and breaks whatever lies above it – roads, railroad tracks, pipes, buildings, and more. In many Russian Arctic cities, more than half of the buildings have been damaged by the shifting earth, and the stability of entire cities is at risk. In remote Russian regions, scientists have discovered massive craters that they believe are being caused by methane eruptions from thawing permafrost. Meanwhile, in the Canadian Arctic, damage to infrastructure has caused a housing shortage, leading to a spike in rent rates and driving them higher than some of the world’s most expensive cities.
Furthermore, permafrost thaw is turning previously frozen earth into ponds and swamps, the emergence of which continues to accelerate the melting process. This transformation from solid ground to porous ponds has increased flooding for communities across the North American and Russian Arctic. Indigenous peoples who reside in the Arctic are particularly affected, and have seen their ancestral lands and burial grounds washed away. Indigenous lifestyles, economies, food security, and customs are threatened as well, as changing ecosystems disrupt familiar natural patterns, and the melting ground destroys ice cellars, which are a key part in Indigenous subsistence lifestyles. Instead of storing food in the frozen ground for months, a strategy that has been practiced for thousands of years, community food stocks are now at risk of rotting, creating further food insecurity in an already at-risk area. In Scandinavia, reindeer herders are facing difficulties as the ground shifts and new bodies of water appear in places where they didn’t exist previously. Many Arctic Indigenous communities also face displacement from their traditional homelands. In Alaska, more than 30 communities face an imminent risk of displacement and need for relocation away from erosion and floods – an endeavour that costs millions of dollars and further contributes to housing insecurity in the region. In Russia, villages are usually not moved, and Indigenous residents are often forced to relocate to cities – a jarring and traumatic experience for people who have lived off the land for generations. Such forced migrations from rural villages to urban agglomerations strains intergenerational knowledge, language, and traditions exchange that have already been damaged by discriminatory policies.
Finally, experts are studying how thawing permafrost may lead to the reemergence of harmful bacteria and diseases that have been frozen in the earth for hundreds of years and could harm Arctic ecosystems. An instance of this has already been seen in 2016, when an anthrax outbreak from a rotting animal carcass found in the permafrost caused over 70 people to be hospitalized in northern Russia, and killed a child and more than 2,300 reindeer.
The effects of permafrost degradation are not only contained within the Arctic, but threaten to spill across boundaries and affect people beyond the region. Permafrost thaw contributes to the release of powerful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and contributes to massive wildfires, which affect air quality levels in places thousands of miles away.
The Arctic Institute Series
Over the next two months, The Arctic Institute’s permafrost series will take readers on a journey across countries, concepts, and collaborations addressing permafrost thaw.
Anneka Williams starts off the fall 2020 series with a personal reflection on doing summer field research in the heat of the Alaskan Arctic, and details how the degrading permafrost impacted both the ecosystems and environment around her, and also her perception of climate change. Next, Alyssa Burns examines the relationship between Arctic sea ice melt and permafrost degradation, and the implications of these processes for our warming world. The following article is authored by Frédéric Bouchard, Ylva Sjöberg, and Michael Fritz from the Frozen Ground Cartoons Team, and details the team’s efforts in making permafrost science and research accessible to all through educational cartoons. In the fourth article, Rhemi Marlatt discusses the impact of permafrost thaw on American security in Alaska, and Arctic geopolitics as a whole. In the following article, Emma Street examines how permafrost degradation is threatening the economy, livelihood, and stability of Churchill, Manitoba, a town in the Canadian Arctic. Next, Maria Polovtseva covers the Russian state’s efforts to contend with climate change and the pros and cons of permafrost degradation in the Russian North. Arctic Institute Visual Manager and Research Associate Valerie Muzik offers the seventh installment of the series, taking a conceptual approach to the nature of permafrost and exploring the impact of its melt on global climate and insecurity. Finally, the fall series concludes with a commentary by The Arctic Institute Managing Director Victoria Herrmann on the relationship of permafrost degradation and climate policy action. The series will resume in winter 2021 with a second installment of papers, wherein seven more authors will examine the question of permafrost degradation from personal, scientific, securitization, and legal perspectives.
Through this two-part series and associated webinars, we aim to showcase the dynamic and varied experiences of permafrost degradation, to critically analyze the consequences of its melt, to highlight critical partnerships supporting permafrost research and outreach, and to raise awareness of permafrost’s immense importance – not only for the four million people that call the Arctic home, but for the 7.8 billion of us that call this planet home. What happens beyond the Arctic impacts the Arctic, and vice versa. Urgent action must be taken to save the permafrost, and with it, the rest of the world.