Background Articles

“We’re dropping in elevation because we live on ice cubes,” says a scientist trying to map permafrost.

Upgrades are needed on the tarmac

Climate warming has accelerated the permafrost degradation, which influences the processes of water supply, runoff and discharge in the Source Area of the Yellow River (SAYR) in the northeast of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Climate change is worsening water scarcity in rural Alaska and a host of new strategies is needed to help address the issue says a recent study.

As permafrost thaws around the world, the steel, concrete and tarmac structures sitting on top are warping and crumbling. Is there anything engineers can do to adapt?

Landscape in far-northeastern corner of B.C., a broad swath of muskeg and boreal forest shaped by sporadic islands of permafrost, is warming

Permafrost in Canada's northwest is thawing much faster than researchers predicted 20 years ago, according to the president of the International Permafrost Association.

Talik is ground that is thawed year-round. Now some Alaska scientists have found that were there are tall shrubs above the ground, there is likely to be talik below ground.

In Troms and Finnmark, two glacier fronts have retreated, while one glacier front has progressed slightly. In the last 20 years, the glacier fronts have retreated between 340 and 593 meters.

If carbon emissions continue at current rates, so much mercury will leach from thawing permafrost that fish in the Yukon River could become dangerous to eat within a few decades.

The Red Dog Mine announced last week that it was able to start the use of a new waste water treatment system to purify water after record-breaking warm weather in 2019 caused the sediment levels to rise in the Ikalukrok and Wulik Rivers.

Glaciers are melting, permafrost thaws and buildings are sagging. What scares the scientists most is studies of decomposing carbon from beneath the ground being emitted to the atmosphere as CO2 or methane.

The mounds are believed to be caused by the build up of methane gas in pockets of thawing permafrost under the surface  Dissecting them like surgical abscesses to release the gas is seen as one solution to avoid future eruptions.

Permafrost thaw surrounding the massive Red Dog Mine is releasing higher natural levels of dissolved minerals and other particles into streams, Teck Resources Ltd. says

“People assume that we’re entering this new Arctic, when in reality we have faced adversity for thousands of years. We’ve always been able to adapt and be resilient.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in permafrost across the high-latitude/altitude Northern Hemisphere represents an important potential carbon source under future warming. Here, we provide a comprehensive investigation on the spatiotemporal dynamics of SOC over the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau (TP), which has received less attention compared with the circum-Arctic region. The permafrost region covers ~42% of the entire TP and contains ~37.21 Pg perennially frozen SOC at the baseline period (2006–2015). With continuous warming, the active layer is projected to further deepen, resulting in ~1.86 ± 0.49 Pg and ~3.80 ± 0.76 Pg permafrost carbon thawing by 2100 under moderate and high representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), respectively. This could largely offset the regional carbon sink and even potentially turn the region into a net carbon source. Our findings also highlight the importance of deep permafrost thawing that is generally ignored in current Earth system models.

Scientists found out that amid climate change in the summer, drifting ice goes further north, and the coastal area is freed from ice for a longer period.

CLIMATE change can be fought by releasing herds of large animals into the Arctic, researchers have bizarrely found.