+/- 70% Of Infrastructure On Permafrost Sited In Regions Facing Near-Surface Thaw By 2050
The warming of the Arctic’s frozen grounds has already inflicted a range of calamities on its hardy residents: paved roads that look like ribbons fluttering in a breeze; concrete buildings warped into a cockeyed latticework of cracks. Broken pipelines. Landslides. Sudden sinkholes. Drained lakes.
In coming decades, the shifting terrain that accompanies the warming of the permafrost caused by climate change will put more such human-made structures at risk. Nearly 70 percent of the infrastructure in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions — including at least 120,000 buildings and nearly 25,000 miles of roads — are located in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost by 2050, according to new research in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Scientists reached this and several other stark conclusions in six papers that the journal published Tuesday focusing on the fate of the warming permafrost — the continuously frozen grounds that are, as one of the papers described it, “the foundation of the Arctic tundra ecosystems.” The papers were reviews and syntheses of research by groups of scientists in several countries around the polar region.
Atmospheric temperatures in parts of the Arctic have risen by as much as 4 degrees Celsius over preindustrial times, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. That rise — more than triple the global average — stems largely from humans burning fossil fuels. “Permafrost is basically a reflection of everything that’s happening on top of it,” said Dmitry Streletskiy, an associate professor of geography at George Washington University and one of the authors of the paper on the impacts of changing permafrost on infrastructure. “If you have warmer climates, permafrost will reflect that.”
Another paper reported that underground temperatures in colder permafrost areas — places such as the high-altitude Arctic that have temperatures less than minus-2 degrees Celsius (28 degrees Fahrenheit) — were warming at faster rates, up to about 1 degree Celsius per decade. In comparison, it took the planet more than a century to warm 1 degree Celsius. “Simulations unanimously indicate that warming and thawing of permafrost will continue in response to climate change and potentially accelerate,” the study said, noting that there was substantial variation in the amount and timing of the predicted changes based on various climate scenarios.
EDIT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/11/permafrost-melting-arctic/
