The thawing of the permafrost soils is one of the most visible consequences of global warming. The Leipzig geographer Mathias Ulrich conducts research in the Russian Region of Yakutia on sagging permafrost soils.
De-icing deposits of Permafrost in the Lena Delta, Yakutia
Deutsche Welle: Mr. Dr. Ulrich, on the 24. The UN climate summit in Katowice (COP24) to set the course for an efficient climate protection. Are you interested in the consequences of climate change for the people in Russia, for the local economy. Permafrost soils but also in other countries. Why do research in Russia?
I have also worked on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and in the USA, in Alaska, scientifically. I can already look back on a longstanding and active cooperation with the Melnikov-the Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, the capital of Yakutsk. In addition, the work in Yakutia is extremely exciting, because there are different stages of Permafrost Degradation in a confined space so vividly, like in a Textbook. Certain processes run much more drastic and faster than elsewhere.
Why?
The soil in Yakutia and other regions of Russia and has an ice content of up to 80 percent, which makes the soil extremely sensitive. As soon as this ice thaws, though, it drastically.
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Mathias Ulrich has been working for years with Permafrost
And that is exactly your field of research?
Yes, I have been researching the melting of the Permafrost, called Thermokarst processes, and the concomitant sagging of the ground surface.
How is this process?
The top layer of Permafrost thaws in the summer and should freeze back in the Winter. But now the climate warming, which may have natural reasons, but in the last approximately hundred years, due to the anthropogenic, human-made climate change has drastically accelerated. And so this summer, de-icing zone is gradually larger. This upsets the balance of the Permafrost that lies beneath, and the thaws more and more.
It is water, which is amplified due to its thermal properties this process is still more accumulated. So lakes, so-called Thermokarst lakes, which grow more and more, and part unstoppable.
The speed with which this happens?
The Thermokarst lakes, which, I observe, also using aerial and satellite images, formed within 20-40 years. These lakes are now almost 200 meters in diameter and up to 5 meters deep. This means that the surface decreases in the average 7 inches in the year.
More: comment: COP24 – Bad times for the climate
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterLakes, where formerly was a pasture
For many years, Mathias Ulrich from the Institute of geography of the University of Leipzig examined how the permafrost soil thaws in Yakutia. On his photos, the consequences of this development are to be seen. A few decades ago, there were these two lakes. In the Soviet period, was operated here until the 1960s, agriculture.
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterThe lakes are getting bigger and bigger
The images in the bottom row is clear to see how quickly the two lakes are grown around 50 kilometres to the East of Yakutsk in the last 25 years. Scientists in the satellite study the pictures carefully. They are part of a research article, Mathias Ulrich, published together with an international group of authors in 2017 in the journal “Water Resources Research”.
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterConstruction on muddy ground
Also in the village Tschuraptscha in Central Yakutia, the permafrost soil thaws. As a result, the Start and runway of the local airfield, which was still operated in Soviet times, has become unusable. However, the local people to build, contrary to the Council of experts continue to see houses on this moist and increasingly unstable ground.
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterMelting Ice Sheets At The End Of
The permafrost soil thaws, even in the high North is always faster. This is about ten to 20 meters thick layer of ice on the banks of the Lena river Delta will be gone in a few years, warns geographer Ulrich. And then…
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterProgressive Soil Subsidence
… will yield the floor, probably equal to several meters, as seen in this photo. Scientists refer to the taubedingte ground subsidence as a Thermokarst. This changes the Terrain and is for the infrastructure – such as roads, railway lines or Pipelines in the permafrost is a big Problem areas.
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterThe buildings are in danger
In the vicinity of the Lena Delta and the Arctic port of Tiksi is located. The houses from the Soviet era are here, as elsewhere in permafrost areas, on stilts. By today’s standards many of them are not anchored deep enough in the soil. Global warming leads to individual buildings and even entire cities are in danger.
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterCrooked Houses
Especially on the roofs of these wooden houses in Yakutsk is clearly seen, what are the consequences of the taubedingte ground reduction for buildings that are not built on piles. In the worst case, collapse.
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Siberia’s Permafrost thaws fasterCooling of the soil
In order to stabilize the ground under the hospital in Yakutsk, was built in a plant, which cools the soil artificially. It is expensive to stabilize the subsiding soils, in order to preserve the existing infrastructure.
Now you might say: Where is the Problem? All of this happens in the Wilderness, the area is very sparsely populated!
But in this specific case, it is former agricultural land. They had to be abandoned, the people can no longer use as grazing land. Yes, Siberia is sparsely populated. But what one should not forget: more than half of the land area of Russia is underlain by Permafrost.
Here are many of the raw materials will be promoted, including a majority of the Russian Oil and gas, there are fairly large cities – I call only to Yakutsk with almost 300,000 inhabitants. And now imagine that the land on which houses and holdings are available, have been installed on those streets, railway tracks and Pipelines, every year to several inches of sagging.
In Russia the Dimension aware of this problem?
In scientific circles, without a doubt, Yes. On-site, for example, in Yakutia, where it came to deformations and even to the collapse of buildings, it is likely to be the people quite aware of.
Therefore, Yes, the buildings are placed on stilts. But the people in the European part of Russia, where the majority of the population lives in Moscow or Saint-Petersburg, underestimate my impression is that the speed and the consequences of Permafrost Degradation.
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Mammoths from the Russian ice
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Mammoths from the Russian ice
What are the further consequences for the population and the nature?
The consequences are quite diverse! The indigenous peoples lose their usual living conditions. The nature changes: the tree line, where the Taiga merges into the Tundra shifts more to the North.
Now, the inhabitants of Siberia and, more generally, of Russia hardly as threatening feel.
An other effect is for the whole of our planet’s maximum threat: In the Permafrost, huge amounts of stored carbon that are released during the Thaw partly free and in the atmosphere. This leads to the further climate warming, which in turn speeds up the thawing process. According to studies, the could lead, in a historically short period of time to a massive Emission of greenhouse gases.
And the economic consequences for the Russian regions will be that the soils under houses, Farms and any transport infrastructure to be unstable and could lead to accidents?
I’m no Economist, but it’s pretty obvious that the further thawing of the permafrost an enormous additional financial and human resources necessary to keep existing infrastructure maintained. And it will be more expensive without a doubt, the further development of Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, which is driving Russia right now, enormous. Its should be the people there aware of it.
Mathias Ulrich is a research associate of the Institute of geography of the University of Leipzig. He watched for years how the climate change on the Russian Region of Yakutia (Eastern Siberia). There, he researched the Degradation or Thawing of Permafrost.
The interview was conducted by Andrey Gurkov.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticIt will sea
For a long time, adventurers and explorers ventured into the Arctic. But now that the ice is disappearing, can also penetrate the trading ships here. 29. August 2008 marked a turning point: For the first Time, the North East and North West passage were for some time at the same time navigable without icebreakers. Since then, this ship-friendly period is in the summer, getting longer and longer.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticVia a shortcut from the Atlantic to the Pacific
The 6500-Kilometer-long North-East passage (figure) leads from Asia to Russia and Norway over and connects the Atlantic and the Pacific. The only little shorter North-West passage leads to Canada over the direction of New York. On both routes pass through the vessels, the Bering Strait and the Arctic ocean. This is not just only when the ice blocking the path.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticThe Alternatives are longer
To get from Rotterdam to Tokyo, to ships currently in India and through the Suez canal in Egypt. Well over 6000 km through the northeast passage. On the Eastern U.S. coast, ships arrive from Asia across the Pacific and then through the Panama canal. Here, too, the Northwest passage is more than 4000 kilometers shorter.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticThe Pioneers
In 2009, the former Bremen-based Beluga sent passage-the shipping company for the first time, two German heavy-lift freighters through the northeast. Since then, the shipping traffic has increased in the Region. Strong the North polar sea, was driven, currently, still (still) says Burkhard Lemper from the Institute of shipping Economics and logistics in Bremen alone, because the track is only temporarily free.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticFree By Journey
How strong the warming around the North pole is progressing, can’t say a climate scientist. But: “All agree that the Arctic will be in the next 30 to 50 years, ice-free,” said sea ice expert Christian Haas from the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven. As the ice scientists call the Arctic, when the ice cover decreases in the summer under 1 Million square kilometers.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticHow long will the rest take?
Biologists fear a loss of unique wildlife in the Arctic, if there are more ships there. Beluga whales, Grönlandwale and walruses, for example, are then in danger, wrote US researchers in July in the “Proceedings” of the US Academy of Sciences. They had investigated 80 populations of marine mammals and found that over half of them live along the North – East and the North-West passage.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticVery special residents
Scientists fear that, especially Narwhals under the ship traffic could suffer in the Arctic ocean. The marine mammals to keep close to the pack ice along the coasts. What is striking is the helical Tusk of the male, which can be up to three meters long. Here is a life-size replica in the Ozeaneum in Stralsund.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticModel Of Antarctica
Researchers and environmentalists are calling for, finally, guidelines for ship travel in the Arctic: ships would have to avoid the main hunting grounds of the whales, their travel times on their walks to adjust, the noise and reduce speed. “There is not in the Arctic – this is the big difference to the Antarctic,” says biologist Christian Bussau, Greenpeace.
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10 years of free travel through the ArcticThe calm before the storm?
Just 50 ships, according to Greenpeace expert Bussau, the North – East and the North-West passage per year. The German shipowners ‘ Association speaks of a number in the two digit range. “Time is of the essence anyway,” says Bussau. “In the long term, will be going on in the Arctic.” But so far, there are no environmental regulations for shipping in the Region.