Permafrost in Northern Siberia has warmed one degree in 10 years
The temperature of permafrost at depths greater than 10 meters around the world since 2007 has grown on average by 0.29 degree Celsius, and in Siberia — almost one degree.
The study about it was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Permafrost covers about one sixth of the land, and in Russia — about a third of the country, and in places its depth reaches a mile. Previous studies have shown that global climate change will lead to a destabilization of the permafrost, the decrease of its bearing capacity, which is dangerous for settlements, for example, in the Russian Arctic, and the release into the atmosphere of additional carbon dioxide and methane from decomposition of accumulated organic matter — thus, the melting permafrost not only itself is destroyed due to climate change, but also strengthens it.
Global scientific network to monitor the state of permafrost Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) prepared the first extensive evaluation of the growth of permafrost temperature, which is fixed today. For this network participants from 26 countries in 2007, measured the temperature of the permafrost in the Arctic, the Antarctic and mountain areas at a depth of more than 10 meters, to exclude seasonal fluctuations in temperature. All researchers examined 154 points, 123 of which accumulated data for the whole decade.
It turned out that over these ten years, 71 of the 123 wells temperature rose, and in five of them, the permafrost is melting — the temperature there exceeded zero degrees. In 12 locations in Eastern Canada, southern Eurasia and on the Antarctic Peninsula the temperature of the permafrost has decreased, and 40 points remained unchanged. Most of all, 0.9 and 0.93 degrees warmer in two wells in the North-East and North-West Siberia. In the Arctic as a whole in the territories where the permafrost accounts for more than 90 percent of the area, the temperature of the wells increased by 0.3 degrees in other areas — by 0.2 degrees. The temperature of permafrost in the Alps, the Himalayas and the Scandinavian mountains have risen by an average of 0.19 degrees (with Alpine tundra on the South of Yakutia there was a hole with a warming of 1.15%) and in the Antarctic — by 0.37 degrees.
The authors note that while the coverage of their networks of observation points is not ideal, as they do not have enough wells in Siberia, Central Canada, Antarctica, the Himalayas and the Andes. They emphasize that in contrast to weather data and the world meteorological organization, permafrost yet no single international authority. Moreover, the wells and the sensors in them still exist only because individual research groups within the framework of the small projects.
According to estimates published at the end of last year, by mid-century due to global warming may be damaged 70 percent of the Arctic infrastructure. A particularly high risk of damage to the Railways (in particular, the northernmost railway in the world, from Obskaya to Bovanenkovo, which is located on the Yamal Peninsula). In the zone melting mezoti is about 1,200 towns and villages and 3.4 thousand kilometers of oil and gas pipelines (it is approximately equal to the distance from Moscow to Novosibirsk).