"Nearly 70 percent of the infrastructure in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions are located in areas that could have near-surface thaw by 2050, researchers project".
"The warming of the Arctic’s frozen grounds has already inflicted a range of calamities on its hardy residents: paved roads that look like ribbons fluttering in a breeze; concrete buildings warped into a cockeyed latticework of cracks. Broken pipelines. Landslides. Sudden sinkholes. Drained lakes.
In coming decades, the shifting terrain that accompanies the warming of the permafrost caused by climate change will put more such human-made structures at risk. Nearly 70 percent of the infrastructure in the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost regions — including at least 120,000 buildings and nearly 25,000 miles of roads — are located in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost by 2050, according to new research in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Scientists reached this and several other stark conclusions in six papers that the journal published Tuesday focusing on the fate of the warming permafrost — the continuously frozen grounds that are, as one of the papers described it, “the foundation of the Arctic tundra ecosystems.” The papers were reviews and syntheses of research by groups of scientists in several countries around the polar region."
Joshua Partlow reports for the Washington Post January 11, 2022.
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