Melting Arctic Permafrost

"The ground thaws and swallows it [scientific equipment]. We've put cameras in the ground, we've put temperature equipment in the ground, and it gets flooded. It often happens so fast we can't get out there and rescue it. We've lost dozens of field sites. We were collecting data on a forest and all of a sudden it's a lake."
"Permafrost at [that] depth, even a hundred years from now, probably would still be protected in the soil. Except here comes this really crazy liquefication where this abrupt thaw really churns up this stuff."
"These are minimum estimates. We've been very conservative. The landscape is going to be affected more and more every year by permafrost degradation."
"We've got a lot of people [in the Canadian Arctic] living on top of permafrost and building infrastructure on top of permafrost. It's enough to sink northern budgets."
Merritt Turetsky, research biologist, University of Guelph

The Batagaika crater in eastern Russia was formed when land began to sink in the 1960s owing to thawing permafrost. Credit: Yuri Kozyrev/NOOR/eyevine

New research published in the journal Nature reflects a study of the rate of permafrost melt across the Canadian Arctic, with the intention of determining as much as possible what the eventual impact may turn out to be and how it will affect efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In some areas of the Arctic permafrost is melting fast enough that it simply swallows scientific equipment left in research spots for the purpose of studying those areas.

The rapid rate of the permafrost melt has the potential to dramatically increase greenhouse gases released as the permafrost relaxes its grip, from ancient plants and animals that once lived within the tundra and are now caught in its depths. That large areas of frozen soil underlying most of the Northern regions are thawing as the Arctic warms has been understood to be happening for years; the organic carbon from plants once locked in the ice is allowing the organic carbon to melt and decompose.

What was visualized as the ongoing scenario of this change was that a gradual albeit steady erosion of permafrost with a corresponding pace of carbon release would be taking place. Through this research, however, a variable picture of the situation has emerged; rather than melting at a few centimetres rate annually, in actual fact it is several metres of soil that has been destabilizing and sometimes in the unbelievable space of mere days.

A thaw slump, a consequence of thawing permafrost, filled the Peel River Plateau with two million cubic metres of sediment. (Photo: Courtesy of Government of Northwest Territories and Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation)

Sinkholes appear in the landscape -- and hillsides expose deep permafrost as they slide away through the melt process. Rapid permafrost melt is also impacted by larger and hotter wildfires occurring over the Canadian boreal forest. It has been found as well through soil analysis, that the melting areas contain greater amounts of carbon with close to 80 percent holding at least 70 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre.

Landslides caused by heavy rains in September 2017 scar the Caribou Hills near Inuvik, N.W.T. (Photo: Northwest Territories Geological Survey and Aurora Research Institute)

Revealing in the process that permafrost appears likely to release up to 50 percent more greenhouse gases than has been hitherto believed by climate scientists. Much of the gas will be released in the form of methane, about 30 percent more efficient at heat-trapping than is carbon dioxide. Rapid melt aside, the estimate is that decades will pass before the additional carbon release begins to influence global climate.

The news is not quite so hopeful for residents of the Canadian Arctic who will be affected long before the passage of decades as buildings positioned over the permafrost begin to sink, under the influence of its altered state.