The New York Times has it in big headlines; “Alaska’s permafrost is no longer permanent. It is starting to thaw.” And about 30-years from now, by 2050, much of this frozen ground could be gone.
It’s going to happen with evidence that looks normal but shows up as slumping ground, perhaps filled with water. All permafrost in Alaska is a storehouse of ancient carbon, the New York Times report said.
On a page of computerized graphics, the areas most likely to be impacted or become expanses of slumping ground are colored in red with the words, “this is what may be gone,” printed over the photograph of the state.
Also printed in big letters is the warning: “The loss of frozen ground in Arctic regions is a striking result of climate change. And it is also a cause of more warming to come.”
According to the Alaska Public Lands Information Center, permafrost is thickest in arctic Alaska north of the Brooks Range, but it is found to some extent beneath nearly 85 percent of Alaska. That is a lot of land that is vulnerable to permafrost meltdown.
The Center also adds that on the arctic coastal plain, permafrost extends as much as 2,000 feet below the surface and is found everywhere. Near Anchorage, permafrost is found only in isolated patches, and in Southeast Alaska it is found only high in the mountains.
Rick Thoman is an Alaska Climate Specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy located at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Thoman said the current permafrost meltdown is not reversible but if it is, it would take another 100-years.
“We’re feeling the affect first in climate change, and the most in Alaska,” he said. “The rapid temperature rise is real, and we really have to take it seriously. The potential loss of land, cultural change, and lack of planning are going to have consequences. The escalator is going up the stairs.”
Thoman added that in the Arctic, we’re out of time. “We’ve already crossed that line,” he said.
Villages are going to have to deal with rapid changes and it may be time in rural Alaska to start moving to higher ground.
The signs are already here, Thoman said. Some villages used to have good berry-picking areas that have now changed and are either too dry, or are too wet, he said.
Buildings that are starting to sink is another sign.
“Newtok is moving; Shishmaref is looking for a new village site,” Thoman said, adding that whatever happens in the near future is going to happen quickly. “This is a global event.”
A permafrost meltdown comes at a time the Governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, has done away with the State Commission of Climate Change and many in his Republican party even deny that climate change is real. This also comes at a time when, for the first time in history, the Bering Sea has no ice from Dillingham in Bristol Bay to the Chukchi Sea.
Local villagers in the impacted areas say they are worried about the future of hunting sea mammals like seals, whales, and walrus for sustenance. The St. Lawrence Island village of Savoonga, citing the lack of sea ice, is seeking to transplant a herd of reindeer to replace the loss of food sources available since time immemorial.
“This is a scary time for us,” Savoonga tribal leader Delbert Pungowiyi said last month.
With the lack of solid sea ice, the people of Savoonga have to keep an eye out for walrus herds floating by on large ice floes.
According to climate experts, warmer temperatures follow melting ice. As permafrost melts, it creates carbon dioxide from plant life that froze before it had a chance to break down. As more carbon dioxide reaches the atmosphere, it creates a greenhouse gas effect – and traps more warm air on the Earth’s surface, melting more permafrost.
From viewing the map of Alaska with red areas indicating loss of land due to a permafrost meltdown, almost half of the state could be marshy wetlands or under water. Most of what is left appears to be mountainous regions and mountaintops.
The New York Times report said the most vulnerable areas of the state are the vast lowlands along the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, where there are hundreds of villages, home to thousands of Alaska Native people. It is hard to imagine that the landscape we now see and walk on, live on, and have been culturally tied to for centuries, could be gone.
The scientists who have studied the frozen ground are from the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. In the report, senior scientist Max Holmes is quoted as saying: “(This) has all kinds of consequences both locally for this region, for the animals and the people who live here, as well as globally.”
