Degrading permafrost puts Arctic infrastructure at risk by mid-century

Jan Hjort,Olli Karjalainen,Bernd Etzelmüller,Frederick E Nelson,Sebastian Westermann,Juha Aalto,Miska Luoto,Vladimir E Romanovsky

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-07557-4

Abstract

Degradation of near-surface permafrost can pose a serious threat to the utilization of natural resources, and to the sustainable development of Arctic communities. Here we identify at unprecedentedly high spatial resolution infrastructure hazard areas in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions under projected climatic changes and quantify fundamental engineering structures at risk by 2050. We show that nearly four million people and 70% of current infrastructure in the permafrost domain are in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost. Our results demonstrate that one-third of pan-Arctic infrastructure and 45% of the hydrocarbon extraction fields in the Russian Arctic are in regions where thaw-related ground instability can cause severe damage to the built environment. Alarmingly, these figures are not reduced substantially even if the climate change targets of the Paris Agreement are reached.

Highlights

Degradation of near-surface permafrost can pose a serious threat to the utilization of natural resources, and to the sustainable development of Arctic communities
Using the forecasts of the ground thermal regime[23], a consensus of three geohazard indices (Methods), and infrastructure data products we identified central infrastructure hazard areas and quantified infrastructure elements potentially at risk owing to climate change
A substantial proportion of the fundamental human infrastructure is potentially under risk: 48–87% of the current pan-Arctic infrastructure is located in areas where near-surface permafrost is projected to thaw by mid-century (Fig. 2a, Supplementary Tables 2 and 3, Supplementary Data 1)

Summary

Introduction

Degradation of near-surface permafrost can pose a serious threat to the utilization of natural resources, and to the sustainable development of Arctic communities. The aim of this study was to first, map infrastructure hazard areas in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions at unprecedentedly high (~1 km) spatial resolution under projected climatic changes and second, quantify the amount and proportion of engineering structures in areas where ground subsidence and loss of structural bearing capacity could damage infrastructure by 2050. Using the forecasts of the ground thermal regime[23], a consensus of three geohazard indices (Methods), and infrastructure data products we identified central infrastructure hazard areas (i.e., areas of near-surface permafrost thaw and high hazard indicated by the consensus index) and quantified infrastructure elements potentially at risk owing to climate change. We considered current (2015) pan-Arctic population and hydrocarbon extraction fields in the Russian Arctic as special investigation targets

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion