Abstract
AbstractRecent years of increasing air temperature in the Arctic have led to a significant increase in the rate of retreat of permafrost coast, which has threatened livelihoods and infrastructure in these areas. The Kara Sea hosts more than 25% of the total Arctic coastline. However, little is known about how coastal erosion in the Kara Sea may have changed through time, and the climatic and environmental drivers remain unclear. Here we study coastal dynamics along a 4‐km stretch of permafrost and sea‐ice‐affected coastline in south‐west Baydaratskaya Bay of the Kara Sea, western Siberia, between 2005 and 2016, by using handheld differential GPS mapping and satellite imagery. We identified temporal and spatial variations in the retreat rates, ranging between 1.0 (+0.1/−0.6) and 1.9 (+0.7/−1.3) m/yr over the studied coastline during 2005–2016. We also made ground temperature measurements, subsurface resistivity measurements and estimates of wave energy flux of wind‐driven ocean waves, to investigate the dominant climatic factors influencing the observed retreat rates through time. We found that wind‐driven wave activity during sea‐ice‐free days influences the magnitude of coastal retreat in the study area, while recent temperature rise has contributed less to enhancing coastal retreat during the study period. This suggests that the amount of eroded sediment and the associated release of nutrient to the nearshore zone are controlled by the magnitude of wave activity, which may influence infrastructure along the permafrost coast and marine ecosystems in the proximal ocean.
Highlights
| METHODSBaydaratskaya Bay is a shallow gulf in western Siberia along the south‐ west margin of the Kara Sea (Figure 1)
Having ruled out that the observed cliff retreat has changed primarily based on temperature variations during the study period, we evaluated the relationship between cliff retreat rates and total wind‐driven ocean wave energy
We have investigated coastal retreat of cliffs extending for approximately 4 km along the south‐west Baydaratskaya Bay coast in the Kara Sea during 2005 to 2016, through handheld differential global positioning system (DGPS) mapping, analysis of satellite imagery, ground temperature monitoring, subsurface resistivity measurements, and estimation of wave energy flux of wind‐driven ocean waves
Summary
Baydaratskaya Bay is a shallow gulf in western Siberia along the south‐ west margin of the Kara Sea (Figure 1). The device antenna was differentially corrected to a reference station (66°53′46.502′′E, 68°51′6.671′′N; Figure 1). This allowed positional accuracies better than 0.2 m. We produced annual rates of cliff retreat for the periods August 2005 – June 2013, June 2013 – June 2014, June. 0.81 m ±0.1°C at 0°C ±0.1°C at 0°C N/A 1–3 m (vertical) averaged wind speed observed at Marresale meteorological station on the south‐west coast of Yamal Peninsula (see Figure 1 for location), with a wind‐speed‐dependent drag coefficient (for wind speeds up to 30–35 m/s)[40,41] which is valid within a range of observed wind speed (0.6–22.0 m/s). We used only the total wave energy integrated over the identified sea‐ice‐free days, in order to evaluate the influence of ocean wave activity upon observed coastal retreat
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