What will happen if the permafrost melts? Climatologists have assessed how the thawing of permafrost will affect Russia. The planet no longer has an ice jam

Melting permafrost poses a serious danger to the Russian economy; Important infrastructure facilities, including thousands of kilometers of oil and gas pipelines in Western Siberia. And don’t say that you only found out about this now.

The climate is on the verge turning point. If it warms up another few tenths of a degree, the permafrost in the vast expanses of Siberia will begin to melt uncontrollably. The result will be the release into the atmosphere of a significant amount greenhouse gases and widespread damage to Russian infrastructure, including pipelines carrying natural gas to Europe.

The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and climate scientists are tired of warning that this in turn is further accelerating climate change. This region contains huge reserves organic carbon- mainly in the form of permafrost soil and ice clathrates, in which methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) is locked.
Siberian permafrost poses a particular danger. Once the yedoma begins to melt, it cannot be stopped because soil microorganisms will begin to eat carbon and produce heat, promoting further melting. The melting of Yedoma is that turning point.

And for the first time, scientists undertook to predict when this will happen. Anton Vaks from the University of Oxford (UK) and his colleagues reconstructed 500 thousand years of history of Siberian permafrost. We already know how the average global temperature rose and fell during this period, how the ice sheets approached and retreated, so all that remained was to model the reaction of the Siberian soil to these processes.

In fact, this is not so simple, because there is no direct data on this matter and we need to look for an indirect method. Therefore, the researchers visited six caves located from north to south, almost on the same line. Two of them are located under the hot Gobi Desert, three more are in an area where there are patches of permafrost, and the last one is on the edge of Siberia in a zone of continuous permafrost.

Scientists focused on stalagmites, which grow only when there is water in the cave. If the soil is frozen, there is therefore no water. In this way, it was possible to create a chronicle of temperature changes above the caves. And in the northernmost of them, stalagmites grew only once - during a particularly warm interglacial period that lasted 424–374 thousand years ago. At that time, the global average temperature was one and a half degrees higher than the average of the last 10 thousand years. In other words, today's permafrost will become vulnerable when global warming exceeds this same one and a half degrees.

When will this happen? Between 1850 and 2005, the planet's temperature increased by 0.8°C, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even if humanity stopped producing greenhouse gases tomorrow, it would warm by another 0.2°C over the next twenty years. But this, of course, will not happen - emissions will only increase. Moreover, new power plants running on fossil fuels are being built, which means that we will be smoking for at least several more decades.

What are the consequences? For Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter (UK), the biggest concern is landscape. Buildings and infrastructure in Siberia are often built on rigid permafrost foundations that will inevitably weaken. It’s not hard to imagine what will happen next to roads and cities, but it’s scary.

Permafrost, or permafrost, occupies almost two-thirds of the total area of ​​Russia. Because of , upper layer The permafrost thaws more and more in the summer, and its load-bearing capacity decreases, which leads to damage and gradual destruction of everything that is built on it - buildings and a variety of structures, from roads to pipelines. In addition, permafrost thawing itself releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere and the Arctic Ocean.

According to the results of the analysis based on data from 1970-2010, almost all of the observed consequences of climate change are the destruction of buildings, transport infrastructure, as well as Arctic coastal erosion - were considered important with a high level of confidence (meaning that scientists have enough data to make such conclusions). For example, the rate of destruction of the Arctic coasts in Russia is now higher than in Greenland, Canada and Alaska, and amounts to up to 30 square kilometers per year.

As Irina Korneva, a senior researcher at IGKE, told Cherdak, the standardized description of risks that scientists have prepared will allow everyone who may need this information to easily use it to make decisions - the results of the work will be published online. Information scattered across various sources, including Roshydromet reports, will now be available to scientists and everyone in a simpler and more understandable form. As part of the project, British colleagues made a similar assessment of flood risks for their country.

Earlier in 2016, the same group, within the framework of the international project CLICC of the UN Program for environment prepared a risk assessment for the health sectors and water resources. It turned out that the priority risks for Russia today are, for example, more frequent floods in the Black Sea region, Kuban and Amur. Previously, Russian scientists already said that warming in the Black Sea most likely provoked heavy rainfalls that flooded Krymsk in 2012.

In addition, the risks of mortality due to abnormal heat, as in the summer of 2010, and deterioration in public health due to air pollution received high ratings. In the future, according to researchers, we should also be concerned about a decrease in river flow in the south of the country and a deterioration in access to fresh water in the most densely populated regions of the center and south of Russia.

After permafrost, scientists would like to describe the sector in detail Agriculture, where, according to them, information about the possible risks of climate change is also urgently needed, including because in addition to negative consequences, it can also have positive ones, but these consequences also need to be accurately assessed.

New threat to Earth's atmosphere identified

Permafrost is no longer eternal due to global warming. It melts, releasing from its cold depths reserves of methane, the atmospheric concentration of which, according to the most conservative estimates of scientists, has increased more than 3 times over the past 150 years.

In general, carbon dioxide was a priori considered to be the main culprit of the greenhouse effect and, as a consequence, climate warming. But now it turns out that the atmosphere has a more insidious enemy - methane. How significant can be the impact of a decrease in the volume of underwater permafrost and gas hydrates (this is an ice mass with gas “hidden” in it) on methane emissions from bottom sediments into the water column of the Siberian shelf seas and further into the atmosphere? Could this lead to additional climate change and affect the environmental situation on the planet? “MK” tried to find an answer to this question together with scientists. Why did I have to go to Tomsk, where within the walls Polytechnic University(TPU) the International Arctic Forum was held, dedicated to the problem of studying the biogeochemical consequences of degradation (thawing) of permafrost in the Arctic Ocean.

The climate is warming - the permafrost is melting

But first, let's figure out why gas hydrates were even remembered. Back in the 60s, Soviet scientists (Professor Yuri Makogon and co-authors) discovered that methane (CH4) in the form of gas hydrates can exist in permafrost. The basis for this discovery was numerous accidents in oil and gas pipelines, where plugs of methane hydrates formed at low temperatures.

If you take this substance in your hands, it resembles a snowball - compressed snow or ice. But if you set it on fire, this “snowball” will burn no worse than a gas burner. It is generally accepted that the main deposits of hydrates are concentrated in the Arctic shelf area under the underwater permafrost.

Experts are now just developing a system for its extraction on an industrial scale. Members of the international scientific consortium under the leadership of Russian scientists - the head of the laboratory of the Pacific Oceanological Institute. V.I. Ilyichev (POI FEB RAS) professor at TPU Igor Semiletov and TPU professors Natalia Shakhova have revealed another potential of gas hydrates: due to the melting of underwater permafrost, methane escapes into the atmosphere and enhances the greenhouse effect.

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From one cubic centimeter of methane hydrate, 160-180 cubic centimeters of gas are released, which breaks through to the surface of the sea in the form of bubbles. There are many cases where even drilling ships have capsized or been damaged by hydrate gas breakthrough. One of the main versions of education giant craters on the Yamal Peninsula is also associated with permafrost degradation and rapid destabilization of hydrates in the form of explosions.

Graph of increasing estimates of annual methane emissions into the atmosphere over the shelf of the Eastern Arctic seas (EA)

According to 2014 data - 16 million tons.

The graph showing the growth of methane emissions into the atmosphere looks frightening. But only at first glance. Scientists promise that even with a concentration of 100 million tons of methane per year in the atmosphere, sharp warming will not occur. For a climate catastrophe, it is necessary that 1-2 orders of magnitude more be emitted into the atmosphere.

Is it possible? Should we then be worried about methane at all? Moreover, carbon dioxide(CO2) in the atmosphere is still two orders of magnitude greater? It turned out that there are reasons - if not for panic, then for anxiety. According to Igor Semiletov, who spoke at the forum, the content of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere continues to grow faster than CO2: over the past 150 years, the concentration of CH4 in the atmosphere has increased approximately 3 times. In addition, methane has much higher radiation activity than carbon dioxide (from 20 to 40 times).

For a long time, scientists could not understand why the highest concentrations of CH4 are recorded in the atmosphere of the Arctic region (this phenomenon was called the “Arctic maximum of atmospheric CH4”). At first they thought that thermokarst lakes (lakes formed as a result of soil subsidence at the site of thawing) were to blame. underground ice) and swamps. The Arctic seas were not considered suspects at all. But in vain!

"Layer Cake" of the Arctic

To find “evidence,” since the late 1990s, Russian scientists have organized and carried out 30 expeditions along the Northern Sea Route. First - on hydrographic vessels of the Arkhangelsk hydrobase, then for another five years they sailed on small vessels with a displacement of less than 100 tons, entering such shallow water areas where no scientific research vessel of ocean navigation can enter. However, research on small vessels had to be stopped: due to the reduction of ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in the seas of the eastern Arctic (EA), winds began to reach hurricane force. “One day in the fall, our ship, forced to stand on two anchors, was dragged by waves and wind over a distance of about 20 nautical miles in one day, the height of the waves reached 5-6 meters,” recalls Semiletov.

In 2008, a 45-day Russian-Swedish joint expedition took place on board the hydrographic vessel "Yakov Smirnitsky", organized by the Arctic Research Laboratory of POI FEB RAS together with Stockholm and Gothenburg universities. In 2011, the Shakhova-Semiletov group began the first drilling work in the Laptev Sea, on the so-called fast ice (fixed ice along the sea coast), where 17 wells have already been drilled. The purpose of these works was to select deep (as far as possible) bottom sediments to study the patterns of distribution and thawing rates of underwater permafrost in the coastal zone of the Laptev Sea, the methane potential of permafrost and geological control of methane emissions.

Igor Semiletov. Photo: Igor Semiletov.

“The preliminary results we obtained turned out to be extremely interesting,” explains Semiletov. - So, for example, we discovered that the state of the permafrost of the Ivashkinskaya lagoon, which we studied, does not correspond at all classical ideas. What we know from textbooks does not work there. Without going into details, I will explain that we discovered a real “layer cake” of thawed and frozen rocks and a microcanyon of absolutely unknown origin, which lies at depths of the seabed of about two to three meters. Previously, it was believed that it should not be there, because the ice there practically freezes with the sediment, the permafrost in this place is stable... In the fall, we discovered powerful methane emissions from this microcanyon, which were not present in the winter. What does this mean? About the seepage of deep gas. I note that we are talking about preliminary results that require more detailed study, which we plan to carry out in 2017-2018.”

“The bears and I lived peacefully”

We had to work on expeditions carried out from the mid-1990s to the present day in both winter and spring. Where the hydrographic vessel could not pass during these periods, a sledge-tractor train helped.

Participant of a number of winter expeditions to the fast ice of the Laptev Sea, senior researcher at the Department of Geocryology, Faculty of Geology, Moscow State University. Lomonosov Vladimir Tumskoy told us about how such trips took place. Wind and frost up to 40 were not the most important obstacles to obtaining scientific results...

“Preparation for a winter expedition usually begins with planning and selection of gear and equipment,” says Tumskoy. - Then we throw all this into Tiksi - either by river or by plane. Having gathered together in Tiksi, we form a sleigh-tractor train: tractors, a self-propelled drilling rig on caterpillar tracks, towed houses (mounted on steel sleds) for people to work and live in, drilling equipment, food in the form of frozen reindeer carcasses, fish, milk, tea, coffee. Food in the north should be fatty, and then no cold will frighten you.”

In such a train, the train usually travels tens and sometimes hundreds of kilometers to the well drilling site. The road itself takes polar explorers several days: the equipment is heavy, the ice is ruffled (hummocks are a pile of ice fragments, up to 10-20 meters in height), you need to get around it. It often happens that the equipment gets stuck in the snow, and you have to hook up tractors two at a time into one sled.

Having arrived at the point, the expedition, whose total weight is about 100 tons, must disperse as quickly as possible so as not to create a large load on the ice. Well, when everything is ready for work, drilling begins. Drillers extract the shelf core from under the water, after which the scientific team begins to take the necessary measurements right on the ice. It is important before sending samples to the laboratory for Mainland determine their humidity, temperature, salinity and other properties. First of all, gas samples are taken, high-precision measurements of which are carried out immediately in a laboratory tow house. Later, at institutes in Vladivostok, Tomsk, Moscow and abroad, the isotopic composition and radiocarbon age of methane, the molecular and isotopic composition of organic matter are studied in sediment samples. The researchers' goal is to assess the methane potential of precipitation as a source of potential release into the water column and then into the atmosphere.

However, wresting this knowledge from the harsh nature of the Arctic can sometimes be difficult. “We can only work at temperatures up to 35 degrees Celsius,” explains Vladimir Tumskoy, “if it’s colder, the drilling rig works with great difficulty in the cold, and the sediment core raised to the surface quickly freezes. Another obstacle is the strong wind, which literally blows the specialists off their feet. Sometimes, when deadlines are running out and it is no longer possible to postpone drilling, we prepare a wind barrier in the form of a dense piece of awning, which we stretch with a wall and thus deflect the wind flow from the well.”

Vladimir Tumskoy. Photo: TPU

Zoological factors are sometimes added to meteorological factors. Arctic foxes and birds are the most frequent guests whom polar explorers feed with their supplies, but geologists also met harsher inhabitants of the Arctic - polar bears. “Bears periodically come to us, because we often work in the territory where their migration routes pass,” continues Tumskoy. “We drill a hole in the ice in the spring, and then we see that guests have arrived: they are examining it, touching the equipment with their paws, drinking water from our well. One time we were especially concerned about the fate of our colleague, who was taking acoustic measurements in a tent on a crack, and a bear approached the tent. We shout from afar, scare away the clubfoot, and at least the bear stands and, apparently, thinks: should he eat the researcher wearing headphones or not? We still managed to drive him away. And then our acoustician, research fellow at POI FEB RAS Denis Chernykh, came out as if nothing had happened and was surprised that we were all so excited... But in general, we live peacefully with the bears, despite the fact that there have been direct contacts more than once — about ten meters away from me there was a clubfoot. The main thing is to immediately show who is the owner in this territory, so that the animal does not have the desire to return. How do we do this? It’s very simple: we reinforce verbal wishes to retreat into the hummocks by shooting in the air to scare them off.”

The planet no longer has an ice jam

The largest three-month biogeochemical expedition in the Arctic Ocean took place in 2014 on the Swedish icebreaker Oden. It was called SWERUS C3. 84 researchers (19 women and 65 men) from 14 countries took part in it. The expedition was supposed to confirm the presence of mega-emissions of methane discovered by Russian scientists. Scientists did this and... found many new places for methane emissions. In total, more than 500 (!) large leak sites (seeps) were discovered along the icebreaker’s route. And these are only those that were discovered under the ship along its route. Placed like a string on the MBA map, they occupied an area of ​​over 2 million square kilometers! Imagine how many tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of vultures have not yet been discovered.

The main result of the latest expedition of Russian scientists on board the research vessel Akademik Lavrentyev (it ended in Vladivostok on November 2 this year) was the discovery of an increase in the scale and intensity of methane emissions from previously discovered leaks.

The conclusion that scientists draw is that underwater permafrost is no longer as stable as previously thought; there is no longer a solid ice plug going hundreds of meters deep. The area of ​​megamethane leaks is growing, causing general concern among experts.

But, even despite the participation of many foreign researchers in Arctic expeditions, articles written jointly with our scientists in the most prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Nature Geoscience, conclusions about the leading role of the Siberian Arctic shelf as the source of the formation of the Arctic atmospheric maximum CH4 are still met with gigantic opposition from part of the world scientific community. Essentially, it was divided into two parts. On one side is an international scientific consortium led by Russian scientists, which is establishing its scientific conclusions based on direct, comprehensive and interdisciplinary observations in the harsh storm conditions of the icy Arctic, on the other - desk workers from various countries who build atmospheric models of the formation of the atmospheric Arctic maximum of CH4 due to the transfer of air from tropical latitudes. “This is impossible, since wetlands (wetlands) of tropical latitudes are not such a powerful source of CH4 as previously thought,” explains Semiletov. — And you try to answer the question: is it possible to fill it to the top with water? empty glass by pouring water from another incomplete glass of the same size? My personal opinion is that behind all this is the reluctance of some fairly powerful politicized groups to admit the fact that the global methane budget, formalized at the end of the last century, in which the main natural source on our planet is the tropics, does not correspond to reality - to real new data. And, of course, behind this are the financial interests of a number of groups that receive multi-million dollar grants for their activities.”

The expedition on the icebreaker Oden took several months. Photo: TPU

So, while we wait for the resolution of the dispute between the tropics and the Arctic, it seems that we will have to remain in the dark - how soon will serious climate change occur? After all, if our scientists are right, the entire shelf of the seas of the eastern Arctic in the coming decades may turn into the state in which the anomalous areas are now located - there seems to be a continuous thawing of underwater permafrost there. The release of colossal volumes of the powerful greenhouse gas CH4 could lead to a self-accelerating process of global warming.

But maybe this terrible global warming will still recede and gas hydrates will freeze again? Moreover, some climatologists have long been talking about the approach of an ice age on our planet.

“According to the ancient climate system, we should have already noticed signs of an ice age, but it is not coming,” Igor Semiletov crushes hope. — Over the past 2.5 million years, ice ages and periods of global warming alternated approximately every 105 thousand years. Now we are witnessing a breakdown in this ancient system - warming has lasted for thousands of years... The most likely root cause for this is anthropogenic, and the responsibility lies with the greenhouse effect, the main potential of which so far is CO2 emissions. By the way, signs of this effect are not only the rise in the thermometer around the world, but also the increase in the frequency of cyclones and hurricanes.”

Scientists cannot yet answer the timing of the possible onset of the next stage of additional climate warming. Do we have ten or thirty years left before the onset of irreversible processes? An accurate diagnosis requires more comprehensive and expanded studies focusing on the Arctic seas, where it is assumed that more than 80% of the entire submerged permafrost of the Arctic Ocean exists, under which there may be hydrate reserves that exceed the current amount of methane by about two orders of magnitude. Ideally, according to Semiletov, synchronized annual and all-season research is required using well-equipped research vessels, flying laboratories and space satellites. It is also desirable to organize another observation station on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, which is close to the known large and very large megaseeps. But for now we have to literally wait by the sea for weather.

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The destruction of hydrates on the seabed occurs in various regions of our planet, including the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the Black Sea, Lake Baikal, near the island. Spitsbergen... However, in the listed deep reservoirs, gas bubbles, as a rule, do not reach the surface, as they completely dissolve. In contrast to the shallow Arctic East Siberian shelf, where a significant part of the bubbly CH4 does not have time to dissolve and reaches the sea surface.

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Atmospheric methane concentrations over the Arctic are 10 percent higher than anywhere else on the planet.

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On November 24, to increase the efficiency of research on the basis of TPU, the International Arctic Siberian Research Institute was established science Center, which brought together scientists from 15 universities in 6 countries.

70% of our country is located in the permafrost zone.

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Methane is a greenhouse gas; just like carbon dioxide (CO2), it retains thermal radiation from the surface of our planet, which should escape from the Earth into outer space, and therefore creates conditions for further climate warming.

A quarter of all land in the northern hemisphere is permanently frozen. But a warming climate is leading to the melting of permafrost, which releases greenhouse gases that further accelerate this process. Report from the Lena Delta.

Navigating the 1,500 islands in the Lena Delta requires impeccable concentration: keeping one eye on the radar to avoid running aground, and the other keeping an eye on the coastal landmarks that dot this vast expanse of water and land. Before flowing into the Laptev Sea in northern Siberia, the river floods so widely that its banks turn into foggy stripes on the horizon.

Samoilov Island is distinguished by a wooden hut located on the shore, where scientists and rangers of the reserve live, which covers the mouth of the river and the slopes of the Kharaulakh ridge. Only now slow but irreversible erosion threatens to plunge the house into the waters of the Lena. In the future, the entire island may disappear: a strong rise in water as a result of the spring melting of ice will erode its shores.

Be that as it may, the main blow for this island with an area of ​​5 km2 is the retreat of permafrost under the pressure of climate warming. We are talking about soils whose top layer thaws during the warm season, while the temperature in the depths remains below zero for at least two years in a row.

“The Samoilov ecosystem faces potential destruction,” says an article on the issue in the journal Biogeosciences. The German woman Julia Boike who coordinated the study and her colleagues from the Institute of Polar and Marine Research. Alfred Wegener (AWI) are not going to accept this prospect.

Every year, from April to September, AWI staff and their Russian colleagues from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute and the Permafrost Institute travel to Samoilov Island to study changing soils and landscapes, and the relationship between a warming climate and thawing permafrost.

Two thirds of Russia's area

The island on which the modern research station is located (funded by the Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics) is becoming a favorite observation point: permafrost occupies 95% of the area of ​​Siberia and two-thirds of the territory of Russia. Overall, frozen soil accounts for a quarter of the entire northern hemisphere, mainly in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Russia and China.

Western Europe is distinguished by alpine-type permafrost, which is found in a number of mountain ranges. Its structure and geodynamics are different from frozen soils in northern latitudes, but it is also sensitive to climate change. Thus, on August 23, soil movement as a result of thawing permafrost carried away eight people near the Swiss village of Bondo.

“In some places, the Siberian permafrost was formed a very long time ago, back during the Pleistocene (the period from 2.6 million years ago to 11,000 years ago), says Yulia Boyke. “It is very cold, about -9ºC, and goes to a depth of almost 1,500 meters in the north of Yakutia.”

“On Samoilov Island it is relatively stable and has a high content of organic matter with the presence of peat bogs,” she adds, putting on thick rubber boots, without which it is impossible to walk on the sticky tundra that covers the island’s surface. The young scientists accompanying her go with her to Kurungnakh. The neighboring island has complex ice formations, and its topography is formed by thermokarst deposits (obtained as a result of the subsidence of long-frozen land).

The valleys through which AWI scientists walk for six hours are full of streams. “We want to understand whether this water comes from seasonal precipitation or from melting ice as soils change,” explains geomorphologist Anne Morgenstern. She always has a notepad at the ready and a backpack filled with collected water samples.

Huge freezer

The melting of permafrost in Siberia and other regions where scientists take measurements is a confirmed fact. Thanks to sensors located in several wells (some drilled to a depth of 100 meters), a Russian-German team of specialists was able to record a temperature increase of 1.5-2 ºС since 2006.

“We are seeing a trend toward warming soils and rising air temperatures in winter time, - confirms Yulia Boyke. “A change in the temperature component affects the entire balance of energy flows, water and greenhouse gases.” An alarming conclusion, given that the Arctic is involved in regulating the entire earth's climate.

“Permafrost is a huge freezer,” explains Torsten Sachs from the German Geological Research Center (GFZ), who visited the island for the eighth time. “If you leave the freezer door open, your pizza will defrost, your ice cream will melt, and germs will begin to multiply on this organic matter.” Permafrost releases organic matter, which, under the influence of microorganisms, release CO2 in the presence of oxygen or methane in an anaerobic environment, for example, on the Samoilov peat bogs.

These greenhouse gases contribute to rising temperatures, which in turn lead to the thawing of permafrost and the release of gases. Experts call this the “retroactive process of carbon in permafrost.” According to them, it contains 1,500 gigatons of carbon, which is twice the amount in the atmosphere.

Additional warming

But what are the proportions of carbon dioxide and methane released by soils during defrosting? The latter, by the way, creates a 25 times more powerful greenhouse effect. “This is one of the main issues for the future,” admits an employee of the National Center scientific research Gerhard Krinner.

The concern is even greater because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's models to date have not taken into account the effects of thawing permafrost. “The additional warming due to thawing permafrost is about 10%,” says Gerhardt Krinner. Thus, greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost could raise the thermometer by 0.3 ºС by 2100.

In the research station's laboratory (maintained at a stable temperature by three loudly roaring generators), scientists examine graphs of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Methane peaks occur in the summer, but data analysis remains a challenge at such high latitudes. The first period of measurements (2002-2012) was carried out without automated equipment, which is available at the modern base commissioned in 2013.

Three years earlier, during a visit to Samoilov Island, President Vladimir Putin felt that Russian-German cooperation on permafrost deserved more efficient infrastructure. Until that moment, AWI employees (their first expedition to the island took place back in 1998) had to be content with the minimum: sleep in tents, warm themselves with firewood (from the forest descending along the Lena) and use the rangers’ hut as a headquarters.

Process pace

Wintering was impossible then. “We simply could not collect data in winter,” says Thorsten Sachs. “It was necessary to add fuel to the external generator every three days at a temperature of -40ºC in the polar night.” Other difficulties with data interpretation look much more familiar. Ten years is too short a period to detect changes in gas flow trends over the long term. In addition, it is necessary to increase the number of observation points, which is by no means easy to achieve in Siberia, which is more than 20 times larger in area than France.

A good distance from the station, painted in the colors of the Russian flag, the AWI team is completing the construction of an “igloo” that will house the computer and electronic equipment of a new meteorological tower in 2018. A fiberglass cocoon should create the necessary conditions for stable measurements, creating shelter from the fierce winds and snowstorms of the Siberian winter. Like other buildings on the island, the igloo stands on stilts so as not to be affected by ground movement. So, at the first weather tower the ground sank by 10 centimeters over the course of a year.

“There is no longer any doubt about the connection between climate change and thawing permafrost,” says engineer Peter Schreiber, who is busy assembling the igloo. “The question now is at what speed the permafrost will continue to melt, and how nature will react to this process.”

Nature is the main manager of the changes taking place in Siberia, notes Fedor Sellyakhov. The head of the research station acknowledges the changes that have occurred around him: “For example, 20 years ago there was not a single tree here, but only vegetation typical of the tundra. On a trip to the delta last year, I saw trees 2 meters high.”

Be that as it may, this native of Yakutia from the banks of Vilyuy does not believe in the anthropological causes of climate change. “This is the cycle of nature. It was warm here 100 years ago, then it became cold, and now another period of warming begins,” he says in his office, which is decorated with fossils found in the surrounding area.

Mammoth tusk

As for permafrost, “it’s probably melting, but slowly.” “When we take a mammoth tusk out of the soil, we realize that the other end is still in the ground, still frozen. This is a sign that the permafrost remains very cold,” he continues. An unexpected consequence of melting soils on far north began the development of hunting for ancient remains.

Günter “Molo” Stoof understands the attitude of his Russian friends. “Nature decides, not man,” says this AWI technician who has been on the island the longest. Now 65 years old, he vows that this season will be the last of his career (48 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic). This native East Germany was the youngest member of the nearly two-year Soviet expedition (1975-1977) tasked with building a base in Antarctica. He had the opportunity to visit the polar regions more than once, both alone and as part of groups.

His life path reflects a different story, cooperation between the GDR and the USSR during cold war. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a scientific committee was formed, which was tasked with determining the scientific research program of a united Germany. He recommended maintaining the polar direction and building it around the AWI research group in Potsdam. “It included specialists such as Molo and Christine Siegert, who had 20 years of experience in studying permafrost thanks to joint work with the USSR,” explains Anna Morgenstern.

The study of frozen soils became widespread in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century in accordance with the strategic decisions of Moscow. The policy of developing the eastern and northern regions rich in hydrocarbons and other natural resources could not be carried out without construction Trans-Siberian Railway. Be that as it may, to implement this project it was initially necessary to form engineering science about the omnipresent permafrost here.

At the end of the 1930s, the Institute of Permafrost Science was created in Moscow. In 1960 it was moved to Yakutsk. This large Eastern Siberian city also stands on frozen ground. Two underground galleries (at a depth of 4 and 12 meters) at the base of the institute provide “direct” access to the permafrost. Sand layers tell the story geological history city, which was built on the alluvial deposits of the Lena.

Anthrax and depressions

Heavy doors help keep temperatures below zero. “The melting of permafrost poses a threat to the planet, but on the scale of Yakutia everything is still quite stable,” explains the director of the institute, Mikhail Grigoriev. “At the same time, the consequences of melting are more noticeable in other regions, especially in Yamal.”

After the abnormally warm summer of 2016, an epidemic began on the peninsula anthrax(the first case since 1941, according to the Moscow Institute of Epidemiology) due to the melting of permafrost in which the pathogen was located. In addition, newspapers again started talking about the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug after detection of volumetric depressions. They were also a consequence of permafrost melting. “The region is rich in gas. When the soil melts, it releases gas bubbles, which explain these explosions,” says Mikhail Grigoriev.

At the same time, not a single case of this kind has so far been registered on Samoilov Island, Alaska or northern Canada. The Global Permafrost Monitoring Network collects data from more than 250 sites. Its goal is to “bring together knowledge as well as validate new climate models,” says AWI researcher Hugues Lantuit.

In addition, research into alpine permafrost is now gaining momentum. The European Permafrost Conference, scheduled for June 2018, is due to report on this work, which has received active development in Switzerland, but is still in its infancy in France.

Another source of concern is coastal erosion and its socio-economic consequences: a third of the world's coastlines are in the permafrost zone. In the Laptev Sea and the Beaufort Sea ( North America) Coastal erosion can reach eight meters a year, forcing nearby villages to consider moving houses. On Samoilov Island, the coastal wooden hut is still in place. But how long will it last?

“Without exception, all modern climate models give a warming of the climate of Russia in the 21st century, significantly exceeding the average global warming. The greatest increase in surface temperature is expected in winter, and it intensifies to the north, reaching maximum values in the Arctic."

Report on climate risks in the territory Russian Federation Climate Center of Roshydromet, 2017.

It is often said that global warming is generally beneficial for our country, almost two-thirds of which is occupied by permafrost, or in common parlance, permafrost. True, now you rarely hear “eternal”; more often you hear “permafrost”.

But both “permafrost” and “permafrost” (permafrost soils, permafrost) are very difficult to develop. In summer, its upper part thaws, a layer without ice is formed - the active layer. It is difficult to build in such an area. Ice is always an increased volume compared to thawed rocks. Freezing again, it will push out the building erected above it. Melting permafrost also distorts oil wells. Another example: in Norilsk over the past ten years the number of buildings damaged has been higher than in the previous 50 years.

Even a simple trip of an all-terrain vehicle across the virgin tundra can lead to a violation of the temperature regime, further formation of thermokarst sinkholes, lakes, flooding and deformation of pipelines laid across the territory. It was the thawing of the soil under the roadbed that caused the destruction of sections of the Salekhard-Igarka railway built in the 50s of the 20th century. In those same years in Moscow state university The world's first department of geocryology (permafrost science) was opened: the study of the properties of the permafrost zone was considered especially important for our country.

Nowadays, presenting the Report on climate risks on the territory of the Russian Federation in early February, the head of Roshydromet, Maxim Yakovenko, noted: 2017 was one of the warmest years on the planet, and the warming was most noticeable in the Arctic zone. If the average temperature increase across the globe was one degree, then in the northern regions it was three degrees. This increase is an undoubted trend of our time, and to track it, a decision was made to restore previously closed weather stations in the Arctic. The initial plans include the restoration of forty stations, which will require a corresponding renewal of the infrastructure that supported them.

It is also worth noting that last year 2017 was the first record year without the help of El Niño (the displacement of heated surface waters Pacific Ocean to the east), and El Niño has always influenced the climate.

Director of the Main Geophysical Observatory named after. A.I. Voeykova Vladimir Kattsov believes that the Arctic is gradually moving towards (already in the middle of the 21st century), and this is happening at a rate of 13.3% per decade. You can also see how sharply the CO2 concentration has jumped. In 2015, the psychological minimum of 400 parts per million was exceeded for the first time - this is 40% more than what was observed in the pre-industrial era.

The danger of climate risks today is in second place after weapons of mass destruction. It’s not just a matter of rising sea levels (by more than 2.5 mm per year), which threatens to flood not only the distant Netherlands, but also some of our oil-producing regions (Yamal). The cryolithozone contains a huge amount of methane. If due to global warming If methane begins to be released into the atmosphere, this gas will be much more effective than carbon dioxide in creating a “blanket” over the earth’s surface, contributing to further warming.

The “blanket” effect can already be observed in Moscow, where it is still warmer than in comparable regions, since there is a dome of gases, dust, etc. above it. But methane is tens of times denser than CO2, has a 25-30 times stronger greenhouse effect and does not leave the atmosphere for much longer.

Last year, based on the re-drilling of four wells carried out by the Institute of Permafrost Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1982-1983, it was found that the rate of degradation of underwater permafrost in the last thirty years reaches 18 cm per year (average value 14 cm per year). And if previously it was believed that the main part of the permafrost on the shelf of the Eastern Arctic seas is continuous, and methane emissions here are impossible in the foreseeable future, then after observations from 2011-2016 there is no longer such confidence. Icebergs that plow up permafrost in shallow waters, forming furrows 4-6 meters deep, from which methane oozes, are also dangerous in this regard.

From the Climate Risk Report: “Permafrost degradation on the Kara Sea coast could lead to a significant increase in coastal erosion, which currently results in coastal retreat of 2–4 meters annually. Of particular danger is the weakening of the permafrost on Novaya Zemlya in the areas where radioactive waste storage facilities are located.”

It is worth mentioning the risks for the indigenous peoples of the North: due to more frequent thaws, a layer of ice forms on the ground, reindeer cannot get lichens from under the ice crust, and earlier melting and later formation river ice leads to disruption of traditional ways, which directly affects the economic structure of indigenous peoples.

There are also advantages to be noted. Melting ice leads to easier navigation along the Northern Sea Route, which increases the accessibility of the Russian Arctic. So, in January, the gas tanker Eduard Toll arrived from Korea in Sabetta - for the first time without the support of an icebreaker at this time of year. On the other hand, the use of winter roads will decrease - and the reach of some remote points may be a problem in the conditions of underdevelopment of northern small aviation.

Methane hydrate - the so-called “ice gas” - is another source of hydrocarbons: from one cubic meter of methane hydrate you can get 164 cubic meters natural gas. Russia has large deposits of this potential natural resource. However, at a time when permafrost is thawing, it represents more of a danger than a benefit to the economy.

From the Climate Risk Report: “In the context of resource-based economic development Arctic regions The issue of sustainability of the fuel and energy complex infrastructure, which includes an extensive network of pipelines, is especially important to Russia. Studies conducted in the United States have shown that to maintain the standard operability of the existing infrastructure in Alaska in the period up to 2030, from 3.6 to 6.1 billion dollars will be required and about 7.6 billion in the period up to 2080. Although similar long-term estimates for Russia are absent, it can be assumed that, taking into account the significantly more infrastructure facilities in the permafrost zone, the costs of their maintenance will be higher. Already, about 55 billion rubles are spent annually just on servicing pipelines in areas of permafrost in Russia.”

There is a somewhat tension-relieving hypothesis about the periodicity of fluctuations in the climate system, according to which in the 2020-2040s we can expect a new cooling and growth of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean. However, according to the conclusion of Roshydromet, although the recurrence of such phenomena does exist, the available data do not make it possible to predict its intervals.

Prepared by Tatyana Shabaeva