Evolution of Permafrost: An Impact on The Socio-Economic Conditions

Abstract

In the present technological era, climate change has become the word of the hour. Since 1970, Climate Change has been in discussion and that its adverse effects should be reduced by 2100. But these climate change effects have been observed and felt predominantly since the past 10 years. One such effect is the thawing of permafrost. Permafrost, being an integral component provides stability to the land around the Arctic regions. But, due to thawing of 2,000-43,000 years old permafrost structures around Alaska and Siberia, has resulted in instability triggering in loss of millions of dollars. Due to the unstable nature there has been a historic, economic and cultural revolution in the regions present around the arctic. The permafrost has also been considered as the last remnants of the Ice age and is also a prominent source of the Paleontological remains. Permafrost depletion is a dynamic effect which results in a misnomer to regular people. Due to such changes in permafrost, nature of water, ecosystems and also communities living on the permafrost land will be primarily affected. Therefore, this resulted in release of greenhouse gases and also caused bubbling effect in 72 lakes around Alaska. Thawing of permafrost creates a staggering impact as they contain 1600 billion tons of carbon dioxide and methane stored globally within which 150 billion tons of carbon dioxide and methane is expected to be released by 2100 which is tantamount to the amount of greenhouse gases released by USA alone by the burning of fossil fuels. Acceleration of the adversity of climate change is being observed due to the effects caused by nature and fossil fuels which in turn results in difficulties in sustainability of living beings. Depletion of permafrost also results in land sliding into the sea simultaneously resulting in erosion of 2-5 meters of land per year. Furthermore, melting of permafrost provoke the awakening of prehistoric microbes that have been dormant for the past 20,000 years giving rise to deadly diseases like those that resulted in Neanderthal extinction. In this paper, we will be discussing about the impact of depletion of permafrost on the socio-economic conditions around the Arctic region and the methods which could be imbibed to have a stable socio-economic condition around that region. This paper also corroborates about the escalation of deadly diseases caused worldwide due to the depletion of permafrost. This paper provides an overview on the drastic change beginning from food chain pattern to the conventional cremation procedure of the people living in the arctic region.