Hot Topics in the Far North: Permafrost Thaw and Wildfires

False. Permafrost is a perennially frozen layer of soil, but it isn’t unique to the Arctic. Most of Antarctica is underlain with permafrost . The Himalayan region – sometimes called “the Third Pole” – also contains permafrost. Permafrost soils can even be found in Mongolia and parts of China. Permafrost varies across landscapes: experts describe it as “continuous” (such as the permafrost region across Siberia) or “discontinous” in areas with patchy distribution. Permafrost can also be found beneath the ocean floor.

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Woodwell Climate Research Center

B. Yedoma is a type of ice-rich, ancient permafrost, whose sediments and decaying organic matter were deposited as long ago as the Pleistocene era. Across the Arctic, permafrost varies widely in depth and in the content of organic material and ice. In some places, yedoma has been found to be 50 meters thick.

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U.S. National Park Service

Yedoma is noteworthy because of its carbon-rich soil and high concentration of ice (approximately 80%). When yedoma permafrost thaws, it becomes unstable, collapses the soil, and releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane.

Usteq is a Yup'ik word meaning catastrophic land collapse triggered by the combination of thawing permafrost, erosion, and flooding.

False. Arctic Indigenous peoples have lived in permafrost zones for thousands of years. Today, approximately four million people live atop permafrost soils in the circumpolar Arctic.

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Chris Linder/Woodwell Climate Research Center

Life in permafrost zones is becoming more challenging due to permafrost thaw. As this upper layer of soil warms, the ice turns to water and the ground subsides, damaging any infrastructure built on top. Roads, railways, and pipelines warp and buckle. Rural communities report damage to homes, boardwalks, sewerage containment facilities, and fuel tank storage areas. Damage to oil production sites can lead to oil spills and other sources of pollution, leaving a long-term legacy of harm to the environment and health of residents. Coastal communities get hit with a "double whammy": thawing permafrost accelerates erosion along the coast at a time when the season for sea ice – which acts as a protective buffer from waves – is much shorter now, leaving the coast more vulnerable to forceful winter storms.

In short, people have lived on permafrost for thousands of years, but it’s human-caused climate change that is making permafrost zones inhospitable.

True. While most permafrost is too deep underground for wildfires to reach directly, wildfires remove the protective, insulation-like layers of vegetation and soil which help keep permafrost frozen, accelerating the thawing process.

Many people picture snowy tundra when thinking about the Arctic. In fact, the Arctic is home to extensive boreal forests, also known as “taiga.” This is the predominant forest type in the world, stretching across the permafrost zone in the northern hemisphere, including Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia. Boreal forest species have adapted to short growing seasons and cold temperatures.

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Matt Snyder/Alaska Division of Forestry

Wildfires are not unusual in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. However, because average temperatures at high latitudes are now increasing – Ed Alexander reports that in his home region of the Yukon, temperatures have increased by 9°F in the last 50 years – drought, heat stress, insect infestations, and lightning strikes are becoming more common in the boreal forest. These changes, in turn, are creating favorable conditions for wildfires. In the last several years, wildfires have tripled in the Arctic. The New York Times reported that in Siberia, “nearly 23 million acres burned from 1982 to 2020. But almost half of that occurred in 2019 and 2020.” Experts expect Arctic wildfires to grow in size, frequency, and intensity if current warming trends continue.

True. Russia encompasses approximately half of the northern hemisphere’s permafrost (because of the varying definitions of permafrost, it is difficult to provide an exact number). Canada has the second largest permafrost area after Russia.

Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky and his colleagues have been monitoring soil temperatures at points across the permafrost zone for 35 years to understand the impact of warming trends on permafrost. They have recorded their observations from sites in Russia, Alaska, and other locations in the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost. Such data is critical for accurate global climate models.

Due to the diplomatic tensions resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine, Western scientists can no longer send equipment to Siberia, and Russian scientists can no longer send data to their Western partners. A short gap in data sharing “is not that bad,” said Romanovsky, and changes in Siberia can be inferred by studying those in Scandinavia and Alaska. However, if this interruption continues for an extended period, he said that “estimates of changes in global permafrost will be biased.”

Current geopolitical tensions make it risky for Russian scientists to communicate with Westerners, although thanks to long-time personal relationships, some interaction is still occurring. Maintaining these ties, and finding ways to engage young permafrost scientists, will be important for the future of climate change research.

False. The only effective solution for slowing or halting the process of permafrost thaw on a large scale is reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Governments, businesses, and individuals must continue striving to prevent average temperatures from increasing more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, as agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is important to note that even if global greenhouse gas emissions were cut to zero overnight, temperatures in the Arctic will continue to rise for several decades, making adaptation strategies for Arctic communities crucial.

Some solutions might be able to slow permafrost thaw at a small scale. At some oil production facilities in Alaska, Russia, and Canada, engineers use “thermosyphons” – aluminum pipes filled with pressurized carbon dioxide that, when sunk into the ground, draw heat away from the soil and keep the ground frozen. In another example in Canada, some scientists are rushing to prevent thaw in a 2,300 acre site where toxic mine tailings were stored in the permafrost - one of the world’s largest sites of arsenic trioxide dust. The method they hope will contain these harmful substances from leaking into the environment requires a system of “freeze pipes” to circulate a sub-zero brine. Paradoxically, this approach, called “Artificial Ground Freezing (AGF),” is energy-intensive, but experts are also researching ways to keep the permafrost frozen with renewable energy. In Siberia, an experiment is underway in which Russian biologists are introducing grazing animals to the tundra, so that the animals’ hooves compact snow and create a protective insulation layer for the permafrost.

Partly true. For several years, negotiators at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have been wrangling with solutions to help poor and vulnerable countries mitigate and prevent the physical, environmental, and social impacts of climate change. As Brenda Ekwurzel explained in our study group session, at the COP28 summit in Dubai in December 2023, nations agreed to establish a “Loss and Damage Fund” to which the world’s rich and polluting nations will commit funds to help developing countries avoid, or respond to climate impacts.

Because Indigenous communities located inside wealthy Arctic nations will not be eligible for support from the Loss and Damage Fund, some nations are seeking to create other mechanisms to assist these stakeholders. In Alaska, for example federal and private funds are being made available, such as those being harnessed through the Permafrost Pathways project which engages scientists, Alaska Native villages, and government agencies in analyzing the impacts of permafrost thaw at specific sites and planning for relocation.  

However, as Ed Alexander said, “any loss fund will be comically small compared to the damages already incurred.” Pointing out his window to the still-frozen Yukon, Alexander remarked, “Take salmon, for example; salmon hardly come up that river any more. We live on salmon. You can give me a thousand dollars. But I can’t eat a thousand dollars. That is not going to give me the same kind of sustenance, it’s not going to compensate our people for the loss of our culture, our way of life, our main food source.”