Warming Could Mean Major Thaw for Alaska Permafrost

If you’d asked permafrost researcher Vladimir Romanovsky five years ago if he thought the permafrost of the North Slope of Alaska was in danger of substantial thaw this century because of global warming, he would have said no.  The permanently frozen soils of the northern reaches of the state are much colder, and so more stable than the warmer, more vulnerable permafrost of interior Alaska, he would have said.

“I cannot say it anymore” he told journalists last month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

New work Romanovsky presented at the conference suggests that if warming isn’t tempered, more than half of the permafrost of the North Slope (a region bigger than Minnesota) could thaw by century’s end.  Such a thaw would imperil infrastructure, local ecosystems and potentially release more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Romanovsky has observed the substantial rise in temperature of permafrost that has already happened in the North Slope, as well as the damage caused to infrastructure when it thaws and causes the ground to collapse.

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